HANK BLAIR INTERVIEW
NAU.OH.75.23
United Indian Traders Association
[BEGIN SIDE 1]
This is Karen Underhill for Northern Arizona University. We're here at Totsoh Trading Post in beautiful downtown Lukachukai, with Hank Blair. It is Thursday, August 13, [1998], at 11:00 a.m. [Also present are Lew Steiger, who is operating the recording equipment, and Brad Cole from Northern Arizona University.]
Underhill: Hank, we'll start with where and when you were born.
Blair: Well, I was born May 26, 1947, in Farmington, New Mexico. We lived at Red Mesa Trading Post, but Farmington was the nearest hospital, so that's where I was born.
Underhill: And who were your parents?
Blair: My dad was Bradley Blair and my mother was Carolyn Reknee [phonetic spelling] Blair.
Underhill: And how did your dad come to be at Red Mesa?
Blair: My dad was from Kentucky, and he was one of three brothers who eventually ended up in the trading post business. The oldest brother, Raymond, who was the first to come to Arizona, was in the Marine Corps in China in the thirties. And the lady that was to become my Aunt Marilene [phonetic spelling], was the daughter of George Bloomfield at Toadlena Trading Post. Her sister, as I understand, put her name in a pen pal magazine, and my uncle who was in China, in the Marine Corps, started writing to her, and of course she said, "If you're ever in Toadlena, New Mexico, come see me." He was discharged, I guess, in California, and he rode a freight train to Gallup and hitchhiked to Toadlena, and when they saw [each other], I guess they just said, "This is it, we'll get married." And then my dad was in World War II, and he came out after he got out of the service, and my Uncle Raymond's brother-in-law, Roscoe McGee, offered my dad a job at Red Mesa Trading Post, and that's how he ended up out there. And then Elijah, my younger uncle, is also considered a World War II veteran. I think he got out in 1946, and the same guy, Roscoe McGee, offered him a job, so the three brothers all ended up in the trading post business.
My mother is from New Britain, Connecticut. She was a schoolteacher, and she was a teacher at Teec Nos Pos Boarding School--two teachers. She taught the second grade. I guess the other lady taught the first--Sophie Prucop [phonetic spelling], she's still alive.
And my dad--at Red Mesa, Teec Nos Pos is fifteen miles away, and that's where they got the mail. My dad went to the trading post and the guy who was the trader there--I can't remember who he was--but he said, "There's a cute new schoolteacher up at the school." So that's how my dad and mom met, and that was in 1945 or 1946, somewhere along in there.
Underhill: What are some of your early memories from Red Mesa?
Blair: From Red Mesa? Well, for a kid, you know, what I remember, it was just a great life. You know, I mean, you were out in the middle of nowhere and you had goats and sheep and horses and cows and dogs. The store was filled with all kinds of strange stuff--saddles, the merchandise and everything. For a kid, it was the neatest thing in the world. You could go a hundred miles in any direction and not hit a fence. I think that scared the hell out of my mother, from New Britain, Connecticut. She used to tie us on a leash to the clothesline. She was afraid we'd run away or something. I mean, if we went, it was just, like I said, forever to go anywhere. Like I said, for a kid, it was just neat.
My mom taught us at home 'til I went to the second grade. I lived with my grandmother in Farmington, but then we came back and I think she taught me until I was in the sixth grade. And my sisters--I have three sisters, and later one brother--much later. There was no electricity, [we had] outdoor plumbing. We got water from the windmill, and I remember we had a tank and running water, as far as I remember. And I know that they used to go down to the spring and haul water in a bucket, but there was a windmill there. And a wood stove. I remember taking a bath every Wednesday whether you needed it or not. (chuckles) I think the stove was half propane--or in those days, it was butane-- and half wood. I remember my mom heatin' up water, and we had a big washtub in the middle of the kitchen. Either Coleman lanterns or kerosene lanterns, and takin' a bath, like I said, every Wednesday night. I have a sister that they still do, every Wednesday, whether you need it or not. (laughs) They live in town.
Like I said, especially for a kid, I just really have fond memories of it. You're out there by yourself. The trading post, you weren't so busy that you were always doin' something. It wasn't like there was a customer there every day, every hour. It was kind of a casual, leisurely life.
Underhill: And what did you think of the customers when you were small?
Blair: You know, we were fascinated. I think because my mother and father didn't grow up around here, they were fascinated by the Indians and the culture and everything like that. They passed that on to us. It was just a neat life. We used to go to ceremonies and stuff like that. Go to squaw dances. And we'd go stay with neighboring families when we were little.
It was kind of different at Red Mesa, compared to some other trading posts. There was no mission, no school, so you were kinda by yourself. One thing that you didn't see, you didn't have like a family that lived right next to the store or something like that. You didn't have a mission, so you didn't see the same people. Most of the other trading posts, there was a mission or a school or something right next to it. This was kind of isolated by itself. The windmill actually--it wasn't our well, it belonged to the Navajo Tribe, so that was in your leases, and it's still probably in the leases today, that you had to.... You know, that was your well, you couldn't block it off, you had to provide access to Navajo livestock. So people came to the store with sheep and goats and--you know, like I said, my mom was always afraid we'd just go with 'em when they left, and sometimes we did. I mean, as we got older, we'd just go home with 'em and stuff like that. As a kid, it was really pretty neat.
Underhill: And when did you learn to speak Navajo?
Blair: Well, you learned to speak in the store, probably. You know, you learned how to count and what the names of all the stuff was, 'cause whether you wanted to or not, you ended up workin' in the store. So you learned different things, and you learned different things about the livestock and that kind of stuff. You learned how to.... You know, because you bought livestock, you knew how to say béégashii tsa’ii, that's a cow or female. Deenásts’aa’ was a buck or a ram. So you learned those kind of words.
Underhill: How were you treated by Navajo folks when you were a kid?
Blair: You know, when I was a kid I don't really think I thought about it. Now, I see people that come by. You know, they come and they say, "I knew you when you were a little boy," and stuff like that. And we were really part of the community. I don't think you thought about it then. You have people come by at my uncle's fiftieth anniversary. Kathy and Rhonda's kids came and said, "I'm tired of everybody sayin', 'I knew you when you were that big.'" And I said, "I'm fifty-one years old and they're comin'...." (laughs) You know, the same thing. I can tell when I see somebody come in the store, they'll come over here, and they'll be lookin' at me and they'll be goin' like this, "I knew him when he was that big," and I may not remember exactly who they are. We haven't lived at Red Mesa in thirty-some years, but I still have kids my age, and older people and stuff, they come in. We made a lot of friends. My dad was there twenty years, so he made a lot of friends over the years.
Underhill: And what did you think you wanted to do with your life when you were small?
Blair: Well, I wanted to be a cowboy! (laughs) And I think my dad kinda.... He had an uncle that was a dentist back in Kentucky, and he used to read all the--and I guess in his office he had all the old, in the waiting room he had all these old cowboy magazines. I think my dad and my uncles, they read all those, and they wanted to be cowboys. We rode horses and we were out there yippie-ki-yi-yayin' through the sand dunes and stuff. You wanted to be a cowboy, you know. Or an Indian. (chuckles) We were the only Anglo kids for 50-100 miles. There were probably others, but not very many. We were the minority.
Underhill: How did the store operate then? Were you using a bull pen?
Blair: It was a bull pen store, old bull pen store. The clerk, whoever it was, had to get--it was one item at a time. And that's how you learned to speak Navajo, because they want "(in Navajo) ____________," or "__________" tomatoes, and you just go down the line and [point]. (laughter) "Beans?" "No." And they go, "___________," that's beans. Okay, I'll remember that. I'll try to remember that one. And so that's how you learned Navajo, because you had to learn the name of everything. They'd say, "I want ..." something, and you'd have to figure out exactly what it was.
Everything was on credit, there was no cash money. The Navajos paid their bill in the spring with the wool, and in the fall with the lambs, and odds and ends--like rugs or a cow or different things like that. But it was all credit, or barter, I guess. Even us, I remember going to Farmington, to the Farmington Mercantile, which was the wholesale house where we got everything. I remember my dad, we wanted to go out and eat, my dad would go down to the wholesale house and draw ten dollars on their account, cash, so we could go eat.
I remember somebody comin' in when I was a kid, probably came home from working on the railroad or somethin', with a twenty-dollar bill and bought like a bottle of pop or something, and my dad and mom were emptying all the piggy banks and everything, trying to get change for a twenty- dollar bill. Especially early on, it wasn't a cash business--it was all on the tab. That's the way it was.
Underhill: And how often did someone not pay?
Blair: You know, I don't really remember that. I know there was a lot of pressure on people, on my dad, to collect those bills, because that was--I'm sure it got a little scary. You waited six months to get paid, and they had so much money on the tab. You weren't talkin' about.... You know, it seems nowadays people talk about in the millions of dollars. You're talking about a trading post was doin' $60,000 a year. And it was competitive. People nowadays talk about, "Gosh, what do you do with Basha's, competing against Basha's Supermarket?" My dad had R. B. Foutz on one side, and So-and-So on the other side, and it was competitive, because you had to take care of your customers or somebody else would get 'em, and they wouldn't pay you. But it was really--I think in those days it was a lot [easier]. They needed you just as much as you needed them-- you know, the customers. It was quite different. You both existed because of each other, you know. You were selling coffee, salt, and sugar. We're not talking about.... Later on he probably sold 'em Levi's and shoes and stuff like that, but the whole inventory of the store probably wasn't $10,000. You basically sold basics: flour, salt, sugar, grease for the wagon. I remember the axle, the hubs--those metal hubs, you know--for the wagons. We sold wagons. It was like a used car lot. My mom has movies of puttin' wagons together. It was like a big event. It probably came in on the truck, we're puttin' new wagons together, people helpin' us put the wagons together. You traded 'em in. It was quite the deal.
Underhill: How much animosity was there between traders in this competitive situation?
Blair: It was sort of like a friendly competition. I'm sure there were times that there was kind of.... I'm sure you've heard this from others, but it was like, "These are my customers. Leave my customers alone!" When you bought the store, you bought the customers. That was part of the "blue sky" or whatever, you know, you bought the customers. But it was sort of a friendly competition.
A story my dad used to tell--he and Kelly McGee. Everybody kinda knew how much everybody bought. You knew how much the business was. So whoever the trader was at Teec Nos Pos, my dad and Kelly McGee, they were hauling the wool to town. And so they took a bag and usually bought 200- 300 bags of wool. Well, they took a bag and they put "Red Mesa Wool, 400 and something" on it, like that, and set it on the side of the truck, and then stopped where it was showin' at the trading post, and went in and bought a pop, and howdy and shake with the trader. Well, the guy's lookin' out there and he's going, "Geeminee Christmas! They bought 400 bags of wool!" (laughter) And they just had a pop and went to town. And by the time they got to town, Teec Nos Pos had a phone, well, everybody in town had heard about it. You're talking about a limited number of customers with a limited number of assets. So if somebody somehow got.... You know, man, what are they doin' that they got 400 bags of wool?! It kind of threw shock waves into the deal, you know. That was kind of a story my dad.... I think Kelly McGee, they were kind of jokesters, you know, they did that.
Underhill: Were there other kinds of things you remember like that?
Blair: Not ... really. But like I said, you knew most everybody, and some of 'em, they were family. A lot of the families were related. I grew up callin' everybody my aunt and uncle. My Uncle Raymond, who had married into a big Mormon family, the Bloomfields, they were related to everybody. So they called my mom and dad aunt and uncle, and it wasn't until I was in high school I realized that we really weren't related to all these people. (chuckles) It was kind of a close-knit deal.
Underhill: In terms of the business relationship at Red Mesa, how did the partnership work for your dad?
Blair: You know, Roscoe had about six stores, I think-- Roscoe McGee did. He had about six stores, which my dad was a partner in one of 'em. Like I said, my dad was lucky to get involved with it, 'cause he was a nice guy, he enjoyed the reservation, he enjoyed the Navajos, and he passed that on to my dad. He enjoyed livestock. That was a big part.... You know, the Red Mesa, they were always trying to improve the sheep, the cows: they would bring bulls out and sell 'em, bring rams out and sell 'em--horses--try to improve the stock. It wasn't an altruistic deal--if they have better sheep, better wool, then they can buy more stuff. They have better cows. Roscoe was kind of a frustrated cowboy. He had a ranch and stuff, and he enjoyed that kind of stuff. That became part of the business. We were always sellin' rams and bulls and stuff like that, tryin' to improve the stock. And still, have good stock there. I remember when we moved to Kayenta, the traders there didn't buy or trade livestock, and you could tell by looking, the sheep and everything, the quality of 'em, the cows and everything like that, weren't as good, because the trader, that wasn't his interest.
I remember when we moved to Kayenta, you'd see the sheep people. My dad started buying livestock. Nobody had bought livestock, so you'd see, "Gee, these are scabby-lookin' sheep." (laughter) And my dad, I'm sure, started doin' the same thing, started sellin' bulls and stuff like that. But they had a good relationship, you know. Roscoe, I think, helped my dad out a lot. My dad and my uncles made him quite a bit of money and it worked out. I think my dad was there twenty years, and my uncles off and on were in partners with the same people--basically the same family.
Underhill: When you were a child, what was the lamb and wool season like?
Blair: Well, for a kid, gees, it was just like your dad bought 3,000 new pets for you (laughter) during lamb season, you know. We had, I'd said, 3,000 lambs. And then when I was a young kid, at the end of lamb season, they herded them to Farmington and loaded 'em on the train, you know. It took two or three weeks, and I would go out and stay with Harry Clark and Keet Seely Bynanni [phonetic spellings] in a tent, you know. It seemed like that I went the whole way. My mom said I'd stay one night and want to come home (laughs), have to take a bath or somethin'. We had ticks in our ears. Like I said, for a kid, it was like your dad just bought you 3,000 new pets. We got to play with all of 'em. In wool season, they were bringin' the wool in, weighin' the wool, sackin' the wool, and had a big ol' tin barn my dad built. Don Walker built it for my dad. He was the guy that was kinda the reservation handyman. He could carpenter, plumb, electrician, and he built a lot of the trading posts. He was the guy that always came out and added-onto 'em. I remember him gettin' mad at me for drivin'--you know, I got a hammer and a bunch of his nails, started drivin' 'em into everything that was laying around on the ground--two-by-fours and everything else. It was excitement, it created excitement around the store. People came to the store. White people used to bring their wool to the store in wagons and stuff like that. That was big time, that was a lot of fun.
Underhill: And when did your dad sell Red Mesa?
Blair: In 1966, I believe.
Underhill: And you moved into Farmington, though?
Blair: Well, yeah. I went to high school there. We came out on the weekends, about every weekend we'd come back out to the store. They built the highway in 1962, and my dad moved the trading post about seven miles to the highway. In 1962, he built the new store out on the highway.
Underhill: What did he have to do with the Navajo Tribe to move the trading post?
Blair: You had to get the lease approved. And at that time probably we were dealing more with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was about that time, though, that they started turnin' it over to the tribe. But I would say a lot of it was with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. You had to get a lease, you had to get permits to drill wells and stuff like that. And we moved to the highway.
Underhill: And how did that move to the highway change the nature of the store?
Blair: Well, the building on the highway, it changed the business. Red Mesa was kind of a poor community, a livestock community, and everything like that. You weren't doin' any more business, but you had to pay for that building. So I think it was kind of a traumatic experience for my dad with that. You built a brand new building, but you're doin' the same amount of business. The highway didn't bring that much more business--probably took some of it away. It was kind of a slow business.
Underhill: What kind of services did your mom and dad early on, and later your dad, provide to folks, other than just the dry goods and....
Blair: My dad was a railroad retirement agent, and I don't exactly understand exactly what it was, but that took care of the people that worked on the railroad. You know, they signed up to work on the railroad, signed up for railroad unemployment, I think is what it was, railroad retirement. And again, that was to create business. You know, your customers had no jobs, had no money, so you were tryin' to find 'em a job. We used to haul people to Idaho to work in the sugar beets, Colorado to work in the sugar beets, pick potatoes. Fire fighting--you used to take people, you know, they had crews. You were tryin' to get people jobs, you know, so they'd have money to spend at the trading post.
You signed people up for Social Security. I remember that bein' a big deal because a lot of 'em didn't even have Social Security numbers. So they got 'em Social Security numbers, got 'em a name that you could write down and read. You know, you named 'em so that they would have a name that they could get a Social Security card. They didn't think they should get Social Security because they hadn't worked, and so you had to show that they had had income over the years and stuff like that. I remember that was a big deal. You translated, people would get letters, you sent the kids off to school. That used to be a big business in the fall--every kid got a trunk--we used to have ‘em in here. I mean, sell hundreds of trunks, 'cause every kid got a trunk, 'cause they sent 'em all off to school. They went to Intermountain; Shawaukwa [phonetic spelling], Oklahoma; Shemaiyo [phonetic spelling], Oregon; Brigham City, [Utah]-- they went everywhere. And that was a big business, to send everybody off to school.
Underhill: Was that a mandatory thing?
Blair: Yeah. They fought it for a long time--they didn't want to send the kids to school. But during the fifties, when I remember, they started sending.... Everybody didn't go to school, they always seemed like they kept one or two home to take care of the sheep and take care of the cows. When the kids went to school, I always wanted to go with ‘em. I didn't know where Brigham City, Utah, was, but I used to think, "Man, that's gotta be the place!" 'cause all my friends were goin' to Brigham City, Utah. "Man, I wanna go!" Brigham City sounded like a big place.
Underhill: So what was Farmington like in high school in those days?
Blair: We were like the country kids that went to town, and it wasn't really a pleasant experience. We lived with our grandmother, she wasn't too thrilled to have us all there. (laughs) That was one thing. I remember we had cousins that lived in town. We used to go to town and stay with them on the weekend or something--sometimes go to a movie. We were just the country bumpkins when we'd go downtown to the Roy Rogers serial. They'd give you a quarter, go to the movie and stay all day and eat popcorn and drink pop. It was a hard adjustment. Like I said, you had 3,000 pets out at the trading post. On a good day, run around and do everything, and it was quite an adjustment to go to town.
There were a lot of cultural differences. We were outsiders. You know, you got it from both sides--especially in high school, I think. You know, when you're an adolescent, you're a lot more sensitive to that kind of stuff--the racism and the different things like that, that went on.
Underhill: Can you describe some of that?
Blair: Well, like I said, we were at the trader's, you know, and we had the people who said, "Well, you're just robbin' those poor Indians. You're takin' all their money." And then it's probably the same people goin', "You're hangin' around with them damned Indians." You were "robbin' them poor Indians," and then there were the people that didn't like you 'cause you associated with them. You were kind of buffeted back and forth.
I think I related this incident once before. I was comin' home from school, probably in junior high school or somethin' like that. There was a guy up the street, a grouchy guy, I don't even remember what his name was, but we all kind of stayed away from his yard, you know. I was walkin' down the street, and he said, "C'mere, Blair kid." I came walkin' over, I was kind of scared. Like I said, he kinda knew everybody on the street--the grouchy guy, that's all. My sister one day said, "Hey, you remember the grouchy guy...." And he called me over and he said, "Tell your dad we don't want them red niggers comin' down our street." I really didn't know.... You know, I was old enough, I kinda figured out what he was talkin' about. We had Navajos, they worked for my dad. They'd come to town, they'd need somethin', they'd come to the house. My mom had people that helped my grandma babysit, wash clothes, and stuff like that. So you had that kinda deal goin' on, you know.
Farmington, at that time especially, was during the oil boom. You had a lot of people from Texas and Louisiana and they were a bunch of rednecks, basically. You know, there was a lot of prejudice and things like that.
Underhill: And how did that make you feel?
Blair: Like I said, it was tough. You were torn because as a kid you want to fit in and everything like that, but then you have your friends and your family and stuff like that, that you don't want to give up and everything like that. So I think it ended up bein' we were kinda outsiders. And not just me, but I think a lot of the traders kids put up with the same thing.
Underhill: Were there any Navajo students at Farmington High School?
Blair: Very few. At that time, the Navajo Methodist Mission, which is right there in Farmington, was a big school. Most of the Navajos went there. But considering the size of the population [of] Farmington, there were probably ten or fifteen that went to high school there. Most of the Navajos went to Navajo Mission. Navajo Mission beat Farmington High School in football and everything. They kinda recruited, you know. They picked the cream of the crop of all the Navajos on the reservation--education- wise or things like that. The chairman of the Navajo Tribe, one of the past ones, he went there. And the reason he went there--first they turned him down, and then he had an older brother that was like six-foot-two, 240 [pounds], and the football coach saw him and said, "We want that kid." His mother said, "Only if the little one, the skinny one, goes too." They kind of recruited. So it was a powerhouse. I mean, sports-wise and academics-wise. You'll find, like I said, the [chairman] of the Navajo Tribe. They kind of picked the cream of the crop of the kids. A lot of 'em have gone on to bigger and better things.
Underhill: What did you do when you finished high school?
Blair: I wanted to be a surfer. (laughter) That was when the Beach Boys were big in 1965. I went to California. (laughter) Me and a friend of mine named Wally Price, went to California, we were gonna be surfers. We found out the water is cold and that board is heavy and you can drown! (laughter) Then I went in the service from there. I was in the Marine Corps--went surfing in Vietnam.
Underhill: How long were you in the Marines?
Blair: Two years. Spent sixteen months in Vietnam or overseas.
Underhill: What kind of unit?
Blair: I was in AMTRAX [phonetic spelling], which is like an amphibious tank, is what it is. On my DD-214 is says "sixteen months and one day."
Cole: Were you drafted?
Blair: No. Well, I was in California and my mom wasn't really talkin' to me. I would get this bundle of mail about six weeks late, and it said, "Report to your induction physical September 23," and it was like the twenty-first. I didn't have a car or anything like that, so I didn't go. I went in and enlisted in the Marine Corps, and when I was in boot camp I think I got a warrant for my arrest or something like that, 'cause I hadn't showed up.... Or, I got nasty letters, at the worst.
Underhill: And why was your mom mad at you?
Blair: Probably [because] I wasn't goin' to college or somethin'. I don't remember exactly. I was a rebellious teenager kind of, I guess.
Underhill: So what did you do when you got home in one piece?
Blair: Well, I worked in California for about a year. I had worked, before I went in the service, at a machine shop, Douglas Aircraft, and I worked there for about a year. Then I called my dad and asked if I could come home, and I came home in 1969, I think. I just got [top man?]. There were just too many people out there, you know. You couldn't go anywhere without.... I think two weekends in a row I went to the beach and got hung up on Highway 101 or whatever it was, Pacific Coast Highway, and you could get out of your car and go to Taco Bell and eat and then get back in your car and wait another ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, because the traffic was so bad. In 1969, I came home.
Underhill: How much did the cultural revolution that was going on in society at the time....
Blair: Oh, the sixties or whatever?
Underhill: Yeah, how much did that impact the Navajo Nation?
Blair: Well, I think it impacted the whole country quite a bit. You had all these kids my age that had been sent off to school and everything, comin' back. And the radicalism that was goin' on in the whole nation was goin' on on the Navajo Reservation too. Civil rights was a big thing, and not just in the South, but on the Navajo Reservation too. So there was a lot of activism goin' on in the late sixties and seventies.
Underhill: American Indian Movement?
Blair: American Indian Movement. There was some of that goin' on around the reservation, but I didn't know anybody, really, personally, that was in that. But like I said, the kids my age who had all been off to school and everything like that, they came back. The social programs that the government had come up with, that really impacted the reservation--it impacted the trading post business.
Underhill: For the better or for the worse?
Blair: Well, as far as the trading post, you had customers with money. All of a sudden you had jobs and you had food stamps and all that stuff. You weren't dependent on the wool and the mohair and the lambs, two times a year money comin' in. Moving to Kayenta was a lot different. Red Mesa was a poor, backward kind of a place. Kayenta had the school and the post office and everything like that. It was interesting, at Red Mesa, you had very few people with traditional--you know, their hair in a knot like that, men or women--but nobody spoke English. There were people I'd say, "Yeah, they speak English," but in retrospect, you'd see 'em, and they really didn't. They couldn't hardly speak English. In Kayenta, I remember when I came home from the service, when I came home on leave and stuff like that, and you'd go in the store, and I'd be helping people and they'd be dressed traditionally with their velveteen blouses and everything, and dimes all over, and you'd speak Navajo to 'em, and they could all speak English. It was amazing, to me anyway. It was a different place than Red Mesa. Red Mesa was poor--it still is. It's a poor community. There was a lot of difference. Kayenta, comin' back from the service, it was a fun place. It was "a happenin' place," for me, anyway. It was a lot of fun.
Underhill: And what was Kayenta like then?
Blair: Well, it was a big city, compared to Red Mesa. There was a school, a public school. There was a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. They had two or three trading posts and a motel. There was all kinds of stuff: social, sports, dances, and stuff like that. It was a different place. It was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it, it was neat.
Underhill: How were the dances at that time? Were they also different from the Red Mesa area?
Blair: I'm talkin' about dances like bands and stuff like that--country western dances and stuff like that, which at Red Mesa.... I remember goin' to Mexican Water, you know, when we lived at Red Mesa, goin' and watchin' Tony Curtis in that world-famous movie where he plays....
Underhill: A Roman?
Blair: I don't know, but he's an English guy and he has the Brooklyn accent. I remember watchin' that on a sheet. That was entertainment! At Red Mesa, that was entertainment. You didn't have entertainment at Red Mesa. Then at Kayenta, like I said, there was all kinds of stuff goin' on, compared to.... I don't know how many people lived there then, but it was the big city compared to Red Mesa.
Underhill: And how long did you work there in Kayenta?
Blair: I worked there for three or four years in Kayenta, and for my dad at the trading post. My dad, Bradley and my Uncle Elijah owned that store, and they owned the Whetherlin [phonetic spelling] Motel. My dad had bought the store and the motel. He didn't want to buy the motel, but the guy wouldn't sell the store without the motel. My dad didn't know anything about the motel business. Everybody that he knew in Farmington had gone broke in a motel, and so he didn't want to buy it, but he finally ended up, he and my Uncle Elijah bought the store and the motel. The store was probably about the size of this store. It was a small store, and it was really not the--the Warren Trading Post was the bigger store--I mean, as far as business-wise, because I think [he was] a more aggressive trader at the time. My dad started buyin' livestock, that nobody in Kayenta had done. Started buyin' wool and stuff like that-- doin' the trading post stuff. And so he really transformed the business there. By the time he left, the store was about ten times as big as it was when he went there.
In 1967-1968, when they had the big blizzard, they also had a big piñon crop the next year, and my dad bought several hundred thousand pounds of piñons. And with the money, he expanded the size of the store. So he really took that store from, like I said, about 2,000 square feet to about 10,000 square feet. It turned into a big deal.
Underhill: And how heavy was the tourism there?
Blair: At that time it was a lot compared to--you know, you had the Monument Valley, you had tourists coming. You know, like I said, compared to Red Mesa, it was like bein' at Disneyland for us. They made commercials and movies, and there were all kinds of tourists and stuff like that comin' in. It was actually the Whetherlin Motel, and then there was a Monument Valley Inn, which is now the Holiday Inn. Reuben Heflin and Mildred Heflin, who had owned Kayenta Trading Post and the Whetherlin Inn, had built that Holiday Inn out on the highway out there. So there were two motels there. In the wintertime it was like one traveling salesman staying at the __________ motel business wasn't very great, but it turned into bein' a big asset, as far as business- wise. There was Bill Crawley's [phonetic spelling] Tours. I think there was just one tour company then, but people takin' people out to Monument Valley. And Bill Crawley and his brother--I can't think of his name right offhand, but they were doing tours, and they brought all the commercials in, and the movies, they worked on the movies and stuff like that. So that was exciting, got to see John Wayne, and a bunch of Italians. They used to make those Italian spaghetti westerns out there. It was exciting.
Underhill: And was that when you were in the movies?
Blair: I tried out for deals. I worked on the movies, I worked as a wrangler and my sister did. We used to rent our horses to commercials and stuff like that. Like I said, it paid better to work on 'em than it did to be in 'em, unless you had a union, SAG [Screen Actors Guild] card, or something like that.
Steiger: What was John Wayne like?
Underhill: That crossed my mind too.
Blair: Tall guy. They made a deal for John Ford. It was like a documentary, a tribute to John Ford, and they had a lot of the old stars: John Wayne, Andy Devine, and a lot of people that had been in those old John Wayne movies, Harry Goulding came back, and his wife. A lot of the Navajos that had been in all the old movies, Stagecoach--the Stanleys, there used to be three brothers. I was watching Stagecoach the other night. There's Johnny, Jack, and John-- big, tall guys. They were always in the front of the Indian crowd scenes. They were all there. I think John Ford, John Wayne, and those guys were famous for (chuckles) drinking a little bit. I think that's what they did, drink and play cards while they were down there filming this documentary and stuff.
Underhill: And where did they stay?
Blair: At Gouldings' where they had made all the movies at. Andy Devine, I met in the store. He was a great big guy, and they had to fly him in by himself, because the airport at Monument Valley at Gouldings' is kind of short, and they had to fly him in and out by himself in the plane, because he was so big--a large person. He was a big guy.
Underhill: Who are some of the other famous people you remember coming through?
Blair: Just different actors. Robert Blake. They made Electroglide in Blue, out in Monument Valley. I've seen Robert Redford and different people. And then they had a lot of people that just came to see Monument Valley. My brother-in-law, my wife's brother, we were at the Holiday Inn and Robert Blake was sitting behind us, and I said, "That's Robert Blake." He said, "Who in the hell's Robert Blake?!" I said, "Remember Tell Them Willie Boy is Here?" I don't know if you remember that movie, but Robert Redford was in that. So he goes, "Oh, I know who that...." Well, he's thinking of Robert Redford. He's looking at this blondy guy over here, and Robert Blake is sitting right behind him. So he starts going, "Robert Blake, kick his ass anytime." And I'm goin', "Gees!" And finally I said, "He's sitting right behind you!" And he goes, "Who?" "Right there." And he said, "Oh, I was thinkin' about that blondy guy." (laughs) Robert Redford! Robert Blake was just sitting behind him laughing. "I could kick his butt any day." (laughs)
Charles Bronson, him and Henry Fonda. And they made Once Upon a Time in the West, they made that one, a bunch of Italian yahoos. They were bad. They were just ugly Italians. Instead of ugly Americans, they were ugly Italians.
Underhill: And what did your Navajo friends think of all the movie makers and Italians?
Blair: Around Kayenta, they were kinda used to it, because they had made a lot of movies there, and a lot of commercials. Remember they put that Mercury up on top of that bluff? Then Clint Eastwood, I never did see him, but they did film that movie The Eiger Sanction. I don't think he may have even been there. They climbed that totem pole in the movie. It was somebody else did it, but anyway his double. Eiger Sanction. Like I said, the Japanese ramen noodle commercial my sister did. We got cases of ramen noodles and stuff like that to put in the.... We didn't know what they were, they were all in Japanese. We had octopus ramen noodles, and squid ramen noodles. (laughs) But we worked on that one.
Underhill: To back up just a little bit, how active was your family in the rug business?
Blair: You know, kind of passively. I guess we sold a lot of rugs. What you did is, you bought the rugs and then these rug dealers came around and a lot of times they'd trade you jewelry from Gallup for the rugs. I'm trying to think of the guy's name from Farmington. He was a famous one. And he'd come around. This is not very many rugs. I mean, we have in our house, just stacked up--stacks of 'em, with rugs. These guys, they came around. We didn't go out and sell 'em, we just traded 'em to rug dealers and things like that. Alvey Turney [phonetic spelling] out of Gallup, we'd trade jewelry, which we sold to the Navajos for the rugs. You could probably get buried in more rugs than you could sell, so you were tryin' to move those rugs. And in Kayenta you had tourists comin' around, so that was an added bonus. That probably took over, we probably sold more to tourists than we did wholesale. We still wholesale a lot of rugs.
Jackson Clark--he's passed away now--but he was a big rug dealer out of Durango, Colorado, had the Toleptin [phonetic spelling] Gallery. And how he got into the rug business was he was the Pepsi Cola dealer. He was the Pepsi Cola distributor, and people would say, "Can't pay you now, but how about $500 worth of rugs?" He was interested in it, so he, you know.... But even at Kayenta, I remember we used to trade him for rugs at Kayenta. But his Pepsi distributorship, his franchise, didn't extend that far. The guys in Flagstaff got mad at him for delivering Pepsi out there, so he had to quit. But that's how--we traded rugs for Pepsi, traded rugs for down payment on your car. The rugs were something you were always trying to move. Like I said, you could buy more than you could sell, so you had a lot of rugs.
Underhill: And what did you look for in a rug?
Blair: You looked for how straight it is, the design, the artistic quality, the technical quality, and then you look to see how cute she is (laughs)--the lady that made it. That's what my dad.... My mom would be looking through the rug pile, and she'd say, "Goll, how much did you pay for this?! Why did you pay so much for it?!" My dad would say, "She was really cute." (laughter)
You kinda looked at what would sell, you know. You were kind of the liaison between the weaver and the buyer. More so nowadays, you'd say, "What would match people's couches?" They'd come in with the wild colors and you'd say, "You gotta go with the more vegetable dyes or the more pastel colors. Softer colors, natural colors." I'd look at rugs that we bought in the sixties and the seventies, and yellow was really big then. Your Wide Ruins, your yé’iis and all that were yellow. And now, they bring 'em in like that, they just don't.... Like I said, somewhere in Aspen they're not matchin' their couches, they got different colors. Well, that was your part in tellin' the weaver what kind of rugs to make. You didn't really tell her artistically, but just kind of "leave the yellow out," and stuff like that. I don't remember anybody havin' a yellow couch, but it must have matched somebody's furniture, because [in] the sixties or seventies, look at all those old rugs with a lot of yellow. Like Wide Ruins is the whole--that yellow, which was a vegetable dye. It was a big-time color then.
Underhill: And with three posts in Kayenta, how did that work? Was there friendly competition there?
Blair: Well, there was one guy that was kind of a jerk. He shall remain nameless, but he was a crook. He worked for Babbitts [and how they] did it, was they paid 'em kind of a commission, and they were well-paid, but Babbitts was just happy as long as they were making money. I think this guy in Kayenta cost Babbitts a lot of money in the long run, because Babbitts wanted to build a big supermarket in Kayenta. And because of this guy, it kept 'em out of there for a long time. And like I said, Babbitts, they didn't know what he was doin'--and they may have. They may have known, but gosh, that money comin' in is good. He was a crook.
Underhill: How did the small traders view the Babbitts, in general?
Blair: You know, we never.... Until we moved to Kayenta, they were mostly on the western side of the reservation. Kayenta and Keams Canyon--Oraibi was probably the farthest east they came. When we moved to Kayenta, we had Kayenta, Cow Springs, Toadlena, Tuba City, and then down at Oraibi. They had Cedar Ridge. I don't know how many they had. So you came in contact with 'em. We bought stuff--they were a wholesale supplier. We bought Pendletons from 'em, hardware from 'em. I don't remember any animosity. They really were easy competition, really. They were, what do you call it, distant manager. They ran it from Flagstaff, so they weren't a lot of competition. So probably people thought they were, you know, give 'em a couple more stores. (chuckles) They weren't, what do you call it, absentee management. So they really weren't that competitive.
Underhill: How would you describe traders as a group? Was there a strong sense of community, or people were fairly isolated?
Blair: I think overall there was probably a sense of community. Because my parents weren't from there, and we weren't part of that family--there's a lot of family petty jealousies and stuff like that also--but I think as a group, pretty much you got along with everybody. There were some cliques, you know. I think just like any organization or group of people in the same business, you had people that didn't like other people. And like I said, I don't know whether it was just my parents not being part of that, as far as being a blood or long-time deal, or my parents' character. My parents weren't really people that feuded with other people, or something like that. We kind of got along with everybody. You really, running the store, you didn't have time to be real social. And I've heard other traders' kids say this. I've looked in the window of every trading post on Sunday, when they were closed, 'cause that's the only time you got to go. You'd take off and drive down and you'd look in the window. I remember lookin' in the window at Red Rock across the mountain. The roads were not paved or anything. It wasn't like you were, "Gosh, let's drive over eighty miles of dirt road to visit somebody!" (laughter) It was the fact that people worked hard and they worked a lot. There wasn't a lot of socializing, but there were--you know, you knew a lot of the people, you grew up, I went to school with 'em and stuff like that. I think the eighty miles of dirt road, that would kind of--you know, when it takes you three or four hours to do that.... Nowadays, you'd just be there in an hour or so. I think that kind of isolated people a little bit.
[END SIDE 1, BEGIN SIDE 2]
Underhill: This is Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona University in beautiful downtown Lukachukai, Totsoh Trading Post. It's Part Two of an interview with Hank Blair, and it is Thursday, August 13, 1998, and it's noon.
Hank, we were talking about transportation, and how difficult it was to get around in early years. There's a story about your mom?
Blair: Well, I remember we had a 1950 or 1951, two-door, Ford coupe. There was my mom and myself, and then my little sister. I couldn't have been much more than a toddler, and my sister, I don't know if she could walk, but we were goin' to Farmington in that Ford, and at Rattlesnake, which is just before Shiprock, the motor mounts on the car broke, and the engine went into the radiator, and here was my mom stranded out on the dirt road with two little kids. I remember we rode in on a big truck. [I found out] later it was a propane truck. The roads were bad. The earliest memories that I have are of being stuck somewhere. We'd be playin' in the sand and my dad's over there diggin' and cussin' and cuttin' down sagebrush to put under the wheels of the car. I remember we got a 1958 GMC pickup, used, from somebody--and that was the first pickup truck we had. And four-wheel drive, we probably didn't get one of those 'til they paved all the roads. The roads were bad. I remember taking two hours to go sixty miles on a dirt road in a car.
About gettin' picked up by the propane man: about four or five years ago, I was in the mall at Christmas with my mom, and some guy comes up and goes "Carolyn!" and she goes "Ed!" And they talk. "This is Hank." "Oh, I haven't seen him since he was this little," or whatever. So the guy leaves and I said, "Who in the heck is that, Mom?" She said, "You don't remember him?! That's the guy that picked us up in the propane truck on the side of the road." And I said, "Mom, I was this tall! I don't remember Ed, the propane guy." (laughter)
The roads were bad. Some of my mom's relatives from Connecticut came to visit her one time, and after drivin' out on the dirt road they said, "Carolyn must really love this guy, to live out here in the middle of nowhere!" But the roads were bad.
And getting back, like I said, my earliest memories of bein' stuck. I told my mom that, and she said, "It was your father! He was always tryin' to make it through that sand dune!" Instead of takin' the long way around, he was gonna go across that wash. And the washes would be runnin', you'd go to.... Between Shiprock and Farmington, if it rained, there were two or three big washes, you know, that you'd have to sit and wait 'til the water went down before you could cross 'em. And if you tried to cross, there was always a car buried in the sand to give you that warning, "Don't try it!" 'cause there's quicksand, and it'd just suck you right up when the water was runnin'.
My dad one time--Jake Yellowman's youngest son, he was born, and the mother was in her forties then, and she had what they call a prolapsed uterus or something like that. My grandmother, who was a nurse, was there, and there was a missionary lady around who was a nurse also. They came to this trading post and they said, "Somethin's wrong." So my dad took my grandmother, who was a nurse, and this missionary lady who was a nurse, out there. And they thought, "Well, these two nurses will fix it." They were just scared spitless, they didn't know what to do. And so Old Man Jake, who was an old, old-timer, and he was quite a bit older than the lady, he went and got some herbs and stuff and washed up and everything like that, and he used his fist to push the uterus back into his wife. And then my dad and my grandmother took her to the hospital in Shiprock, and the wash was runnin' and it took 'em about all day to go sixty miles. So the roads were.... And there was no phone.
I remember we had a shooting at the old store at Red Mesa. They were having a branding up by the mesa, and a guy, I think his name was Roy Palmer, he was drunk and he had a rifle, and he crawled up on top of the mesa with a lady. And he was either gonna shoot himself or jump off. And a guy name Bizwoody [phonetic spelling] walked up to the base of the mesa to talk to him, and Roy Palmer shot him and killed him. And I was little, and everybody came to the store. We didn't have a phone, I don't know how they got the police out there. Somebody probably had to drive to Teec Nos Pos to the phone. But I remember people stayed up on the hill above the store to watch for this guy to make sure he didn't come to the store and shoot somebody else. But that was scary. That just came to me. _____ other story. But you didn't have a phone, the doctor was sixty miles away, at least. It was in the Wild West. You were out in the bushes.
Underhill: How prevalent was crime?
Blair: You know, people would steal stuff, but it wasn't like it was dangerous or anything like that. The Navajos had been in this situation with the dominant society for a long time, with the Spanish, and they raided back and forth between the Spanish and the Mexicans. And then the Anglos came, and so it was sort of like a game, "I'll steal this from you, and if you catch me...." And probably on the trader's part, it was probably a paternalistic fear maybe, a little racist. You didn't take it seriously. I mean, you took it seriously, but it wasn't something you called the police over. A lot of times, if somebody stole something, you worked within the Navajo culture. I remember my dad had some new stoves out on the trading post porch one time, and somebody stole one. And so my dad went and got the hand- shaker, the crystal-gazer, to find out what happened to the stove. And she turned in one of her nephews or one of her relatives, and we got the stove back. Like I said, it was kind of like a game or something. It wasn't dangerous or anything like that, but it.... I remember one time we came back to the store and the screen door was gone off the house. "What the heck?! Who stole the screen door?!" Well, a month later, or somethin', we went down to just go picnickin' and visit some families down there, and here was the screen door. They had an apricot orchard, and they needed the screen door to dry the apricots. The thing that's interesting--I mean, they lived about ten miles away. It wasn't a deal where, "Gosh, let's just drive over to the trading post, and let's ride our horse over to the trading post, find a screwdriver and unscrew the screen door. Gosh, that screen door would make a good deal to dry apricots on!" (laughter) Like I said, there was stuff goin' on, but it wasn't....
There used to be a store at Four Corners before I was born, and they left a sixteen-year-old Anglo kid there to guard the store, and he caught somebody stealin' somethin', and the guy took his gun away from him and shot him. And that guy, I grew up knowin' the guy that killed him. He got out of prison. He was around there. Zahnie's boy or Aneth Nez--I can't remember what the guy's name was. But I remember just knowing that as a kid, that he had shot the night watchman at the trading post. This was in the early forties or somethin' like that.
As far as crime, that shoot in Deswood was the most serious thing that I remember happened to anybody. I don't remember any.... As far as alcoholism, there wasn't as much. You know, it wasn't as prevalent. They used to have a bootlegger--I think his name was Joe Lansing. And how he used to do it was, he would hide like a pint of wine behind a post in the corral, and then he would collect the money and tell the people, "It's over there behind that post in the corral." And when we were kids, me and Harrison Clark, a little Navajo kid, we would watch him hide it, and then we'd go around and take it! You know, find the wine, and then he'd have disappointed customers. He'd tell 'em, "It's under that rock over there," and we'd already taken it.
Underhill: And what did you do with it?
Blair: Well, I don't remember drinkin' any of it, but I don't know what we did with it. I think we just gave it to my dad, and he poured it out or somethin' like that.
I remember goin' to a squaw dance, and there would be one drunk, and he was like the.... At the next squaw dance you went to, it would be the one guy. There wasn't really a lot of drinkin' or anything like that. There just wasn't much access to it, although one of the big sellers in the store was raisins and sugar--they used to make raisin jack. Certain people, they'd come in and buy five pounds of raisins and ten pounds of sugar or whatever, and they made raisin jack out of it.
Underhill: You mentioned maybe a slight paternalistic streak among the traders. What characteristics do you think a lot of traders shared in common?
Blair: As far as being paternalistic? I don't really know how to answer that.
Underhill: What makes a good trader?
Blair: I think you have to be a people person, because any kind of a retail business--I don't know if you've ever gone into any business somewhere, and you can tell that guy ain't very good at it. If you can't get along with people-- people who are of a different culture, don't speak the same language as you--if you're a racist, mean, grouchy guy, your customers know that, and it doesn't.... I think the people that were good traders were good people--people people. They liked people--didn't matter what color they were, or what language they spoke, or what religion. The ones that I can think of....
You know, they always talk about traders being characters. Well, they had to be. If you could be workin' in the post office in Aztec, New Mexico, with health benefits and goin' home to your house every evening, why would you want to move to Sheep Snot, Arizona, or somethin' like that, and live in a tent with outdoor plumbin', no electricity, and haul your water from a spring? A guy had to be a little bit of an adventurer.
It's not the safest life. I think especially in the old days, if there was a safety concern, you were out there by yourself. You couldn't call a policeman or anything like that. So I think they had to be a little different.
Underhill: And why do you think a lot of folks stuck with it?
Blair: A lot of it, I think people our age don't realize that comin' out of--my generation--comin' out of the Depression--and even before that I don't think times were that great--that havin' a job or makin' a livin' was a big-- you know, it was a big thing. And I remember my mom thought, being grateful.... You know, after the war, a lot of young couples, you know, the guys got out of the service, they were married, and she was grateful that they had a trading post to themselves. There were a lot of places where people were working at the store just for a place to stay and something to eat. Like I said, a lot of the young couples, the men had been in the service and stuff, and they'd come out, and they were just at the store--they had a place to stay and somethin' to eat. I remember my uncles and people would say, "I worked at the trading post for a month before I knew whether I was even gettin' paid. I was just happy to have a job. I didn't know how much I was makin'. I figured they probably would pay me at the end of the deal." So they were happy to.... Times were a little tougher, so they were happy to be employed and be able to eat. One of my older uncles used to tell us, I guess where he worked you couldn't eat anything out of the store. There were chickens, and you could eat all the eggs you wanted, and kill one chicken a week. That was your board. You got paid room and board, and my uncle wouldn't eat an egg for-- 'cause that's all they ate was eggs. So I think times were different. They were happy to have a job.
Underhill: Not all traders were good.
Blair: Not all traders were good, and not all traders made a livin' at it. I don't know, there's a tendency to think everybody got rich, but there were a lot of traders who went broke. There were a lot of traders that didn't make it, as far as financially. It was a tough way to make a living.
Underhill: For the few who were corrupt, what kinds of corruption have you heard about?
Blair: They talk about guys, they'd have an ax next to the cash register--they didn't even have a cash register-- but they'd charge it to every customer that came in, like it was his. I've heard that--different things--short changed people and stuff like that. You know, short weigh, when they brought the lambs and the wool in and stuff like that, they would short weigh stuff like that. You know, the butcher havin' a heavy thumb when they weighed somethin', and things like that.
Underhill: What would other traders do if they thought someone was corrupt?
Blair: I don't know that you could do anything. I think they just let the.... There's a tendency to think that these poor Indians are too dumb to.... And that's a racist thing. If the traders were robbin' 'em, these Indians must have been pretty damned dumb, to not know that. And the thing is, the Navajos knew it. I would say around those stores and stuff--you know, we talked about this deal of stealing things back and forth--I'd say they probably got even pretty.... Like I said, I think that's a racist.... You know, I mean, you hear people sayin', "You're robbin' those poor Indians," like the Indians didn't know what was happenin' to 'em. They're not dumb. There were bad traders and corrupt traders, but I think the good ones lasted longer than the bad ones did. The deal used to be a lot of times people would come out and they'd think they're gonna make a fortune in five years and move back, buy a hardware store in Farmington or something like that. I think the majority of the traders.... Like I said, there was a lot goin' on that was sort of.... There was an adversarial.... These Navajos had been in conflict with the dominant society for a long time, and they prospered. I mean, there's 250,000 right now. They did pretty well, they survived and they did well.
Underhill: So in the stores that you were involved with, how active were you in the pawn business in the early days?
Blair: You know, we did pawn in both places up until 1973, or whatever it was when the FTC hearings came out.
Underhill: What do you remember about the hearings?
Blair: It was a traumatic deal. No matter what was right or wrong about it, it was a set-up deal. They came to hang the traders. The media was all focused on that, and the outcome was never in doubt of what was gonna happen. It was kind of scary.
Underhill: At the time were you aware that there was an agenda?
Blair: I think it was pretty obvious. The whole bent of the country at that time, there was a lot of "the poor starving Indians. These guys are robbing the poor starving Indians." It was only gonna go one way--right or wrong, that's the way it went.
I just gave a talk. I speak at Diné College up here, and I just gave a talk on pawn a couple of weeks ago to a class up there. And I had done it before, but I learned. Every time we talk about it, and the questions that they ask--all the students were Navajos--and the questions they asked and everything like that, it opened my eyes to a lot of different things. The pawn business has changed. When they cut it out on the reservation--the kind of pawn business we used to do at the trading post has very little to do, is far removed from the pawn business today. It was just another one of those things that you did at the trading post to circulate money, or goods. What you were doing, it's a cash loan business now. Then we did it, most of it was for trade. Somebody came in and got five dollars' worth of groceries and left a bracelet or somethin' for collateral. The traders kept stuff for.... (chuckles) It wasn't a business-like procedure. It was a completely different business. People think in the pawn business that traders pawned that, they wanted to keep that stuff. Nowadays in the pawn business they have a computer program, and if you don't take your pawn out, they won't pawn to you. You accumulate points, and I think it's seven points. If you are late payin', or let pawn go dead, if you accumulate seven points, they cut you off. And a lot of the pawn places will cut you off at four points, because they're in the money-lending business, they don't want that stuff. And a matter of fact, the things that go dead, and most of these places that are successful in the pawn business, they have less than 1 percent of the pawn goes dead. Friends of mine that are down in Tse Bonito, they have 24,000 pawn contracts, and less than 1 percent of 'em go dead. And like I said, in the trading post, the way we did pawn, it was little old ladies that wanted five dollars. You weren't loanin' people money. At this class, they asked, "Well, how much was the most money you loaned?" And I said, "Probably, at the most, $100. Most of it was just little pawn deals." And for us at Kayenta, our business was gettin' so big that the pawn was actually a pain in the butt. You were runnin' a big business, and then you were havin' little old ladies that came in and want to pawn for two dollars. You're fillin' out a pawn ticket, and you're payin' somebody--at that time minimum wage was $1.50 or somethin'. I don't care how you work it out, you're not makin'--it was a pain. So we were kinda glad to get out of it, because it was a different kind of a business than what they're doin' now. We were kinda glad to see it go, because we were.... You're talking about slow-moving things, and clashin' with the hustle and bustle of modern commerce. It was one of the remnants of the old trading post business. We were kinda glad to see it go. [We were] havin' to stop, slow down, and deal with this person.
Somebody asked me in that class, "Why are all the trading posts turning into convenience stores?" And I said, "Why do you think?" And they said, "Well, because nobody wants to run a trading post," or this and that, "and the tribe shut down all the trading posts." And I said, "The reason all the trading posts are turning into convenience stores is because you can make more money in a convenience store. In a trading post, what you're doing, you're running twenty different little business." You were doin' pawn, you're buyin' livestock, you're buyin' wool and mohair, you're sellin' hay, you're fixin' flats, you're writin' letters for people, you're runnin' a bank. I mean, I still do that. If people get to cash their checks on the first of the month, they leave $300-$400 in the vault, I dole it out to 'em $20 at a time. They come in, and you're doin' this stuff. Well, at a convenience store, you're sittin' there, somebody wants a pop, you just sell it. They give you a dollar, you give 'em a pop. There's none of this, "Let's charge that. Let me pawn my bracelet for that car battery, $59.00." Somebody just comes in, they want a car battery, they hand you sixty bucks, you give 'em a car battery.
I've had these guys like Thriftway and these guys [tell me], like a guy put it, "All this community service stuff costs you money. So let's quit doin' that." You don't go into the Safeway supermarket and say, "My husband's in jail, can you give me $400 to get him out?" That doesn't work. At the trading post, that's what happens. People call up.... Yesterday a girl calls up, she's in Salt Lake City, her husband's going to school up there, "Please send my mail and everything up to Salt Lake City." Well, that doesn't pay too much to go get an envelope and put sixty-eight cents' worth of stamps on it and send her check and her food stamps up to Salt Lake City, but that's what you did at the trading post. Like I said, at a trading post, you were runnin' ten different businesses: signing people up for railroad retirement for $50 a month, that was your pay. At one time in the fifties, it was probably $25. That was probably the only cash money my mom saw in a month, so it was a completely different thing.
Underhill: When did you acquire Lukachukai?
Blair: In 1984. I was running.... My dad and my Uncle Elijah owned the store at Kayenta together. My dad passed away in 1983 and it became my mom and my Uncle Elijah, and they did not get along, and I was right in the middle. I was living on Rolaids and Maalox for--I say years, but my wife and I think it was about a year, a little less than a year, actually--about a year--and it was about to kill me. They just didn't get along, and it was my mom's fault. You know, her husband had been killed in a plane crash and she wasn't in any.... We probably could have been a little more considerate of her. It was driving me crazy, so my wife and I, the opportunity came to come over here, and it wasn't that simple, but we ended up with the store. There'd been about five guys here in four years, and gone broke. This was built by Vernon Jack in 1962. He'd been a long-time trader, off and on, over probably thirty or forty years. He'd been at Greasewood, right down the road from here. And he had heart trouble, and his son came out here to run it, and his son didn't really like it. He moved to Kayenta and got a job with the coal company over there. I asked him one time why he left the trading post, and he said, "I thought it was about time I got a real job." And to me, I was scared. I had quit my job over there at Kayenta and looked around and everything. I was afraid I was gonna have to get a real job. That's the last thing I wanted to do, was get a real job. I wanted to be in the tradin' post. He said, "I thought it was about time I got a real job." So he just basically walked off and left this. He sold it to somebody, but they didn't last very long. So we've been here since 1984, fourteen years.
Underhill: And what was involved with the sale? Did you have a lease? You had material goods?
Blair: No, had no lease. There was hardly anything in the store. The only reason the store hadn't been burned down was because the post office was here. They kinda kept the door open to keep the post office goin'. The first time I came over here to look at it, it was probably the first of the month or somethin', and the parking lot was full of cars, and I thought, "Man! these guys are doin' some kind of business!" And I came in the store, and there was not--you could have starved to death in a day. There was not enough to eat. I mean, there was nuthin' in the store. Everybody was here to come in the post office.
Another time while we were looking at it, I came over, and it happened to be some check or something was paid-- everybody was here--and there was absolutely nuthin' in the store, very little. And I thought, "Man, if that many people come to the store, I can make a living doing this. This is neat." And you're dealin' with the tribe, and they are the most screwed up--if my wife was here, she would tell you--she's a Navajo--and the process that they use to give the leases away is the most degrading, humiliating.... Like I said, my wife would be levitating off the ground. It was really.... Their business practices are lacking. It was like a circus. We would come over here, we'd go to the chapter house, and we would talk to the people in the community, and we applied through Economic Development--or whatever they called it then. We spent like a thousand bucks getting a performa made up, financial statements, financial projections. I mean, we had this slick--for a trading post guy, it was a pretty slick presentation. And they had like six or seven people that had applied for the lease.
Underhill: For this place?
Blair: For this place. And like I said, it was an interesting cast of characters (chuckles) that had applied for it. Al Greeve [phonetic spelling] and his wife, who are friends of ours, they had applied for it. And Vicki and myself. There was a guy that owned a topless bar in Continental Divide, New Mexico. What he was gonna do with it, I have no idea. There was a missionary guy, and another guy who was a crook--they had applied for it. The missionary guy was from here. We would go to the chapter house, and there would be four or five people there--six people, ten people. They said, "Well, we're gonna vote." So we came to vote and here is like 100 people there, and the missionary guy has this joy bus, he is unloadin' people. And as they came in the door, they would instruct them, "Vote for this tall, skinny...." He was a tall guy, Doyle Johnson was his name. And so they're sayin', "Vote for this guy." So we all got a color, I think is what it was. All these missionaries that were friends of his were bringin' their congregations in. So we had like a hundred and some people vote, and he got 112 or 113 votes. We got 14, we came in second. And like I said, the proposal--we had submitted this professional proposal. One of the guys in Window Rock showed me their proposal, and it was written on a spiral notebook in pencil, about this long. But they got voted in. And they lasted six months--I don't think even that much. I'd say about three or four months. And my wife and I were livin' in a house with the electricity turned off, and no phone. The phone only worked because my wife's cousin worked for the phone company, and she'd gone in the back and flipped the switch and the phone worked. We had everything we owned in a horse trailer and a pickup. We were gettin' ready--it was like Friday--and we were gettin' ready to move to Farmington, and I was gonna have to get a real job. Wendell Mortenson [phonetic spelling], who's a Navajo guy who worked for Economic Development--and I happened to know him, have known him for a long time, and his family--he called up and said, "Those guys have gone bankrupt--basically have gone bankrupt--and if you want it, be there tomorrow morning." So that's how we ended up with this place. Like I said, it was a circus--it was ridiculous, humiliating, degrading, and you just ended up, because you were already sucked-into the deal.... I mean, it was terrible. The money that we had to open the store we had spent trying to survive for the six or eight months that this circus went on.
Underhill: Would you do it again?
Blair: No, I wouldn't. I would choke them sons of guys.... I mean, if I was in the same circumstances, like I said, I needed a job and everything like that, I'd probably do it again, but I wouldn't like it any better. And if I was cognizant of the fact that I had done this before, I would have a serious talk with myself about doin' this again. If I had the awareness that I had been stupid enough to get involved in this before. But you couldn't borrow any money. The banker, everybody said, "Gees, there's five guys [who have] gone broke in there." And everybody owed everybody. You would call up and want to get something, and you'd call up and say, "Hi, this is Hank Blair from Totsoh Trading Post," and the lady would go, "Herb, get the gun, it's Totsoh Trading Post!" (laughter) I mean, the guy that was here just before us, I think he wrote like $40,000 worth of bad checks. The missionary guy gave this one guy--I think he told Vicki, my wife, that he gave his partner $33,000. So there's $33,000 in less than six months, plus $40,000-some worth of bad checks, plus the NTUA, the utility company. They owed everybody. It was a mess.
They had left some of their bookwork here, and this Doyle Johnson is a nice guy. He's a missionary in Mexico now. Tall, cowboy-looking guy, just the nicest guy, but just--as my Uncle Elijah would say--slower than a wooden watch. Just a ________. And they left their books. What they would do, they would do like $1,000 or $1,500 in a day, and they would take 10 percent for God, for Jesus, off the top. And then I think his partner--and how they got together, I don't know-- was taking 10 percent for Ron off the top. You'd like to net 10 percent in a business, much less just take 10 percent off for Jesus right off the top. But it was an experience. Everybody said, "God, you're gonna go broke! Everybody's gone broke in that business."
Underhill: So how'd you do it?
Blair: My father-in-law, Mr. King Mike, Sr., loaned me $10,000. He's my Navajo guy from Kayenta. He loaned me $10,000, and I paid him back with interest in about six or eight months. I paid him about 20 percent interest. I gave him $12,000 back. I had some money. At Kayenta I had money in a profit-sharing plan, and I drew some of that out. My wife ran the cash register, I mopped the floor and cut the mutton and stocked the shelves. We used to do like $400 a day. I remember someone had all the shelves all faced up. Someone would come and buy a can of beans, and you'd go over there and face it back up. It was just work--work hard.
There had been some crooked guys here and stuff. It was hard to earn the confidence of the customers. You had to really prove yourself to the banker over there, and then to the customer here. Like I said, we did all the trading post stuff. I mean, we sold live sheep on the hoof, and we bought lambs, and we bought wool. We just hustled. Like I said, my wife ran the cash register, I was sweeping the floors and pumpin' the gas. At that time we didn't have-- the gas pumps, we had to go out and put it in. We finally got that deal, self-service. That was kind of an exciting thing--it was fun.
Underhill: Now, Hank, you mentioned when you first came that the only reason it hadn't burned was because of the post office. What do you mean by that?
Blair: Well, the post office was still open, and the tribe had an interest, and the community had an interest in keepin' the post office open. It's what they call a contract post office. And gettin' back to.... We get paid $425 a month for doin' the post office. It costs us about $600, at least, in wages, but it brings people. Everybody comes to get their junk mail, at least, every day. So you've got people comin' in and out of the store. The store wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the post office. That's what kept it open. It would have been gone. I think there were five people that went broke in the store before we got here--in about four years. There were some guys with a bunch of money. There was a guy that inherited a bunch of money and decided he was gonna get rich in the trading post business, and he lasted about a year or somethin' like that.
Underhill: How has your business changed since 1984?
Blair: Well, even just in this short time, you're doin' business, to start, with a lot of older people, livestock people, and stuff like that, and your older customers are just dyin' off. Your old-time Navajos, the "real" Indians, so to speak, are dyin' off. It's evolved more into a convenience-type business, a grocery store rather than a trading post. We don't buy livestock anymore, we don't buy wool and mohair anymore. We don't buy lambs anymore. Part of that [is] people don't have as much livestock as they used to. They just don't have it. It's changed. But like I said, you're still the bank. The electricity goes off in Lukachukai, nobody calls the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority--they call the trading post. And it's your job to call. You're still doin' all that kind of stuff. You're the center of the community.
I have a friend of mine, a Navajo guy, Roy Begay--he was a councilman at Klagetoh. And the Klagetoh store closed down, and he tried to get me to open it up. He said, "If the store goes, there's no community, because that's why that community was there, basically, was the store." That's where the identity of the community comes from, is from the store. Finally they got somebody to open it up. The store is the center of the community. This is where you come and sit down and sit out in front of the store and talk to people. That's the way it's always been. They camped, and we had the whole front of the store with benches, and people would just sit out there all day long--come to town.
For the older people, that was their social life, goin' to the store. I mean, other than goin' to ceremonies and stuff like that. You go get to see people. And it's still that way to a great extent. But that was their community. At Red Mesa, before they built the chapter house, they had the chapter meetings right on the porch of the trading post. Our mom has movies of Paul Jones, who was the chairman of the Navajo Tribe, having a meeting on the front porch of the trading post. My sister and I used to sell Kool-Aid and lemonade up there, a penny a little cup, at the chapter meeting. You know, it was a chapter meeting on the porch of the trading post.
Underhill: Do you have a lease now?
Blair: After ten years, I finally got a lease. I kinda wished I didn't.... All this time, "Gosh, I wish we had a lease." When they finally came around to give it to me, I was, "Gees, I don't know whether I want this thing or not."
Underhill: And how long is it?
Blair: Well, it was twenty-five years, but ten years of it was up. Like I said, the reasoning.... I felt very fortunate. It was supposed to have been a fifteen-year lease, so I felt very fortunate that they didn't give me the fifteen-year lease and tell me I only had five years left. Now we have ten years left--roughly ten or eleven years left.
Underhill: And how does your lease work? What do you give the tribe?
Blair: We pay the tribe a certain percentage of our gross sales. There's a minimum, and you pay 1½ percent of the gross sales.
Cole: Did you pay that over the years you didn't have the lease?
Blair: Yeah, we paid it anyway. I kinda quit for a while. I got mad because we didn't have a lease. You read in the paper, and they had a big supermarket in Window Rock, and they finally just closed up and went bankrupt, and they owed the Tribe $500,000. They don't check. I'm behind right now, I don't know how much, but the Tribe doesn't know that, they don't have any idea. They don't pay attention. They're always talkin' about "We have no revenues!" or whatever, but they don't take care of it. I just got mad and said, "Gees! It'd take twenty years to get where I owed 'em $500,000! So these guys owe 'em $500,000 and just walk off and leave it!" They're always talkin' about, "We have no revenues," and then you don't collect the ones that you have?! I mean, you look at leases, something will be up for lease, and you'll say, "I'd like to lease that," and they say, "Well, you gotta pay $190,000 back rent." Well, the business isn't worth $190,000, and they want.... You're gonna have to spend $200,000 to get it....
Underhill: How would you describe Navajo politics?
Blair: Well, considering at this present time we've had "The President of the Week Club" for the last month. They've impeached the president, then the vice-president became the president. They impeached him. Then somebody else became president for a day--Kelsy Begay. He was president for six or eight hours, then they got Milton Bluehouse in there. I think it's in a sad state of affairs right now. It's in a transition period right now, and I hope it changes into somethin' better, but I don't know.
Underhill: How involved are you in the local politics?
Blair: Not really. I can't vote. You become so much a part of the community that they don't realize that you can't vote. They wonder why you didn't vote. (chuckles) Well, I can't vote! You know, they think that you're part of the community. It's a system that's dominated by certain older factions, because a lot of the younger ones--it's still important that you speak Navajo, and that disenfranchises probably 20 percent or maybe 40 percent of the Navajos because they don't speak Navajo good enough to go down there and participate. There's gonna have to be some changes made. The government at the local level concentrates on grazing, fights, here and in Lukachukai, 'cause you have the farms irrigation. That's what their focus is on. That eliminates about 60 percent of your people, 'cause they don't have livestock, they don't have farms or anything like that.
Underhill: You mentioned Vicki. For the interview, when and how did you meet Vicki?
Blair: I always say I met her at a dance in Kayenta at the chapter house. The first time I saw her, I remember seein' her. She was kinda cute and I thought I'd like to meet her. I knew her brothers. My wife's brother is married to my sister, also. And they teach at the college. Well, my brother-in-law now, he's the controller of the Navajo Community College. He has an MBA from USC or something like that. My wife's the only one in her family that doesn't have a master's degree.
Underhill: Wow.
Blair: Their mom and dad came from sheep camp, didn't go to school 'til they were nine or ten years old, and all their kids are educated. They have done well.
Underhill: When did you get married?
Blair: March 15, 1972. That's my anniversary. My wife had been married before, she had three daughters, and then we have a son. We have six grandkids at this time.
Underhill: Oh, my!
Blair: You're lucky they're not here! They'd have been knockin' on the door every five minutes. They've been here this week.
Underhill: What kind of ceremony did you have?
Blair: We were married by a justice of the peace, and then we had kind of a traditional Navajo wedding. Vicki's grandma insisted on that. So we had a traditional wedding. At the time.... I don't know, it's a pain in the butt. I think women are the ones that like weddings. (chuckles) I'm glad we did have a traditional Navajo wedding. I'd just as soon have been married by Elvis in Vegas or something. (laughter) It was nice.
Underhill: I forgot to ask you early on if you have a Navajo nickname.
Blair: Well, my dad's name was Bitsii’ »izhinii, which is "black hair." The man, Roscoe McGee, who was there before, was a red-headed guy, and his name was __________. So my dad came, and he was Bitsii’ »izhinii. And then I was _____________.
Underhill: Son of?
Blair: "Little black hair," __________, which is "son of." They used to tease me. I used to stay with my Uncle Lij, and they used to tease my mom that I was really his son, instead of my dad's. (laughter) There's a picture of my dad and Roscoe up there at Red Mesa.
Underhill: Well, what do you think Anglo folks should understand about Navajo culture? You've lived it your entire life.
Blair: That it's a really rich culture. I think a lot of times, nowadays, most white people or Anglos, they want to know more about the Navajo culture than a lot of times the Navajos do. In a lot of ways, it's this New Age stuff-- they're all into, you know, "the Indians have the answer to everything." If the Indians had the answer to everything, there'd be more Mercedes dealerships. You know, the Navajos are trying to survive, and everybody's interested in their culture.
My kids have benefitted from my wife being a Navajo. And Navajo culture, I was talking to my mom the other day about my son had a real good--he's socialized, I guess, very good. When we were kids, like I said, when we went to Farmington from the trading post, we were social bozos, I guess. But Navajos teach--you know, my son shakes hands with everyone-- all my kids do. They know how to introduce themselves, which is a big part of Navajo culture. They know who they are, they know who they are in relationship to their family, their cousins, their grandmas. They know their clans. I was telling my mom, because of Vicki and her family, my kids have learned. They get along real well. My son can go anywhere, because of being raised in both cultures. That causes a lot of problems, too. My son's not very big, but he's a tough guy--beat up his cousins. And they said, "Well, how come he's so tough?" I said, "If you're the only half-breed gettin' on the bus to go to school for eighteen years, you get pretty damned tough!" It comes from both sides. You're a little white guy, or you're a little brown guy. You're the wrong.... I think his Navajo culture has really.... All my kids know how to introduce themselves in Navajo. They know their clans, they know.... And that gives you a place, that gives you a starting point or a foundation. That's real good.
Underhill: Well, what do you think you've learned over all these years?
Blair: You asked whether I speak Navajo or not. I tell people I know enough to get into trouble, and not enough to get out. I think I still learn, you're still learnin'. When I was a kid, we wanted to be Indians so bad, because that was, for us, the dominant culture. I wanted to go to school in Brigham City, I wanted to get on that truck with my big trunk and go to school. In a way, it's been hard, because I'm never gonna be, I can't be a Navajo. And I can't be an Anglo, I can't be a white guy either, 'cause I'm not. I'm sorta stuck in the middle.
One time a friend of mine came down from Utah. We traded horses and we went to a ropin'. It was in Tuba City, and there was probably a hundred people there. He said, "You know, we're the only white people here." I said, "There's two of us! I've been the only white guy all my life." I've struggled with that. Like I said, you want to be a Navajo. My sister is married to a black guy, and her kids grew up around the reservation. Well, when the kids at the school get tribal clothes--well, they didn't get tribal clothes, 'cause they're not Navajos. Gees, that's a [hard].... I never had that experience myself, with the tribal clothes, but I've had [others]. You know, you don't belong here, to a certain extent. You've had to deal with that your whole life. Like I said, I can't vote. Ask me what's goin' on in tribal government--I can't vote.
Someone asked me the other day who the governor of Arizona was, and I.... The only reason I know who it is, is because she used to teach school at Chinle--Mrs. Hull, and she's the governor of Arizona. I don't belong there either. I've known more tribal chairmen personally, or tribal presidents personally, than I've known.... Like I said, I just barely.... I know who the governor is, because she came out here to visit one time, 'cause she used to teach school.
Underhill: What do you think you've given back to the communities of Kayenta and Lukachukai?
Blair: Like I said about being at Red Mesa, I don't think you even think about that, but I think just by bein' a good [person]--just like you do anywhere, whether you're a good person, or a trustworthy person, a helpful person-- especially in the Navajo culture, if you help people out.... You have certain responsibilities. Part of this, you know, you have responsibilities to your relatives or to your ______ you've been a good in-law. If you're a Navajo, you're only an in-law to the people that you're in-laws to, but if you're a white guy married to a Navajo, you are related to every Navajo that ever lived or everything--and it's whether you've been a good in-law.
I know that when my dad died in 1983 and they had the funeral at Monument Valley--my dad's buried in the cemetery at Monument Valley--there was I don't know how many people there, but 90 percent of 'em were Navajos, and there was, I'd say, at least five.... It was just overwhelming, there was a lot of people there. And I don't think my dad ever did anything because it was gonna have a big crowd at his funeral or anything like that. But he was a good person. "He helped me out with my sheep when I needed a sheep. He let me buy a ram." People will come up and say that to me. I think it's the same in any community. If you're a productive part of that community, that's how you'll be remembered. I was over there at the college giving a speech, a little lecture on something, and one of the kids was there, and it made me feel pretty damned old, because this girl said she's gettin' her master's degree, and she said "Mr. Blair used to give me a dollar for every 'A' that I had on my report card when I was in elementary school." I still do that. Kids bring in their report cards, and I give 'em a dollar for every "A." I'll have to watch, because sometimes they'll bring the same report card in!--different kid with the same report card. But you know, little things like that. Like I said, it made me feel old. The girl's gettin' her master's degree and she said, "And Mr. Blair used to give me a dollar for every 'A.'" Gees, I'm.... First of all, when the pretty girls start callin' you "Mr. Blair," it's over the hill (laughter), you're dead meat!
[END SIDE 2, BEGIN SIDE 3]
Underhill: This is Karen Underhill, and this is Part Three of an interview with Hank Blair at Totsoh Trading Post, and it's Thursday, August 13, and it's now about 1:15.
So Hank, just before we broke, we were going to ask about United Indian Traders Association. Are you a member?
Blair: I am not a member. I used.... I never had a store at the time when there were memberships available. My dad was a member, my uncle was a member. I know my uncle was an officer of it. I think my dad probably was on the board of directors at one time, or something like that.
My dad kind of had a falling-out with 'em in the seventies, and he refused to buy the membership. The FTC was attacking certain people, or filing charges against certain people. My dad felt that certain ones of 'em needed charges filed against 'em. He didn't want the United Indian Traders to spend money defending.... You know, they came to the United Indian Traders and said, "Pay our lawyers and fight these deals for [us]." My dad felt that some of 'em were crooks. One of the guys was a member of the Mormon Church, and my dad said, "But the guy's a crook!" And they said, "But he's an upstanding member of the Church!" And my dad said, "He's a crook!" So he kind of.... He may have paid his membership, but just didn't participate. He felt if they were crooks, let 'em pay their own lawyer if they were in trouble. He just didn't want to be a part of it.
Steiger: I had one question--not to interrupt. How did you get started giving kids a dollar.... Why did you do that? Why did you give 'em a buck for every "A" they get?
Blair: You know, I think just there's.... You know, there's a big dropout rate and everything like that. You just try to encourage them to stay in school. And the difference between Kayenta and Lukachukai, at the store, when the kids would come in the store and you knew they should be in school and you told their parents--or we used to call the school and the truant officer would come over and get 'em. But at Lukachukai, you call their parents, and they'd tell you to leave their kids alone. "I never went to school and it didn't hurt me a bit!" You know, "I'm a dumb son-of-a-gun, so my kids can be ignorant too!" But we used to do that in Kayenta. My mom was a teacher, and she always encouraged people to go to school. I've just been doin' it for a long time. I've got a couple of kids that I give eight or nine--you know, when they get an "A" in behavior, that wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but.... You know, "Lunch period. He gets an 'A' in lunch." But I still give 'em a dollar. Like I said, I got kids, I've probably given 'em $100 in the last few years, if they get "A's." And like I said, I don't even remember the little girl--vaguely--but when she said she was gettin' her master's degree, "Mr. Blair used to give me a dollar for all my 'A's,'" and stuff like that.
They unload the bus right here in front of the store. I've watched 'em. There's one little girl named Andy--I think it's Andrea. I said, "When you get married, I'm leavin'!" She was born, she's about fourteen years old, they get off the bus here every day, and you see 'em every day. So like I said, when Andy get's married--and I hope she waits 'til she's twenty-two or twenty-three, but when she get's married, that's enough, I'm leavin'!
Underhill: Why have you stayed so long?
Blair: Well, you can make enough to live, but you can't make enough to leave. (laughter) It's one of those kind of deals. That's the truth, really, to a certain extent. And it's hard, you can't sell one of these places. Nobody in their right mind wants to buy a trading post for what it's worth. I used to see guys like Jim McJunkin [phonetic spelling] down at Teec-Tso, and Don Jensen, and I think, "Man, I don't ever want to be there...." You know, they've been there since Christ was a pup. Don Jensen was at Crystal, and he used to have a big chair, and he'd have a foot up against a post, and this is how he ran the store. When his customers came in, they would get what they wanted and either put the cash in the cash register, or write it down on their charge. He'd raised most of 'em, and they would seriously just.... You know, his good customers, he'd be sittin' in a chair, he'd never get up. They'd get their groceries, add it up on the adding machine, write it down, and put the ticket in the deal.
Underhill: And what finally happened to him?
Blair: He left. My wife's brother, as a matter of fact, bought the trading post. It's closed now, but he [i.e., Don Jensen] was there thirty-some years.
Jim McJunkin was at Teec-Tso for thirty-two or thirty- eight [years] or something like that. And a character! I mean, they tell stories.... That's one Lij told about, asked if they wanted to deliver bread, and he said--well, Lij was politer, he said, "Piss on 'em! Let 'em eat crackers!" (laughter) They tell good stories about it, and he was just a character. Been there for thirty-two years. I think he came there as an orphan or something and bought it from someone.
Underhill: What stories do they tell about you?
Blair: About me? Hopefully, givin' the kids a dollar! (laughter) for gettin' "A's" on their report cards.
I'll tell you the story about the thirty-five naked white ladies. You want to hear that story? (laughter)
Underhill: Sure!
Blair: One day, there was an older lady up here, her name was Grace Bin [phonetic spelling]. One of her granddaughters got married. As part of the dowry, they got two cows. Well, they butchered one cow, and on Saturday they ate the cow for the wedding. The next day after the wedding was over, they were gonna butcher the other cow. They showed it the knife, and it got away, and it took off runnin', goin' home. I think the son-in-law was from Crystal or somethin', and this cow just took off down the field. So she calls up and she says, "Mr. Blair, you have horses. Can you come up and help us catch the cow? It's runnin' away." So my daughter was here, Konea [phonetic spelling], so we had two horses. We saddled up the horses, nothing to do in Lukachukai, so we're chasin'.... There's like four or five of us on horses--a couple of her sons-in- laws and kids on horses--and we're chasin' this cow along the base of the mesa up here, and in through the cedar trees. You'd just see it like every mile or so. We're chasin' it, and we go way down here and we go over here to where Totsoh Wash is, and Raymond Knockeye [phonetic spelling] lives up in the corner up there, and his daughter- in-law is havin' kind of a "get closer to your Maker," all these white ladies up there, doin' a sweat and "get to be a real Indian." I don't know what the heck, how to explain it. But we don't know this. We're chasin' the cow along here, and there's three or four of us on horses, and there's like four pickups. It's just somethin'! Everybody's havin' fun, we're chasin' this cow around there. So I come bustin' out of the trees, right around the corner is the wash. And all these Navajos were in the truck, and they're goin'.... I said, "Where did he go?" And they went, "He went down the wash!" So I whip and spur and come around the corner, and here's thirty-five naked white ladies having a sweat lodge over there. (laughter) They'll be tellin' that story, "And Mr. Blair came roarin' around the corner on his horse, and here's all these ladies!" They weren't all naked. They had covered up, because they had heard these other guys. But all the Navajos were goin', "Send Mr. Blair down there to chase that cow!" (laughter) So I go roarin' around the corner and slammin' into the wash, and here's all these.... They were havin' a sweat down there. All these ladies were down there.
Underhill: And what did you do?
Blair: I turned around and calmly went back the other way, and cussed everybody out for sendin' me down there! Sendin' me down to the wash. They thought that was pretty funny. We never did catch the cow. They caught it, it went home, and they went and got it again. So that was a big Sunday in Lukachukai--havin' fun in Lukachukai.
Underhill: When did the Thriftway come in?
Blair: To the reservation?
Underhill: Well, to here.
Blair: This one was here when we came. Well, see, Raymond Knockeye built the little store out there. He was the former chairman of the Navajo Tribe. They had a little gas station and everything, and then it's probably been twenty years ago or more they sold it to Thriftway, and Thriftway has been there ever since.
Underhill: And how does that affect you?
Blair: Well, there used to be three stores here in the area. There used to be the Kennedy Store, which was up here on the hill, and then there was Upper Greasewood, which is about four miles down the road, and they've both been gone. So there's always been several stores. When I came here, this store was basically abandoned, so they had all the business down there. We held our own against it. Everybody was afraid of it. Like I said, when we came here, nobody thought you could compete against 'em or anything. But we're here.
Underhill: And how do you get your supplies for the store?
Blair: They come, actually, all the way from Amarillo, Texas. It's Affiliated Foods, and it goes to Albuquerque, and then there's a small outfit. It's called General Distributing Incorporated, GDI, which I think that's "God Damned Independents" is what it stands for. Then they add about 10 percent onto it and bring it out here. We're kind of at the end of the line, so we pay more for everything that we get. It used to be, when I was a kid, you had salesmen come out to visit you and stuff like that, but it's really changed. It's the same thing--you used to have your mom and pop little grocery and dry goods store in every little town, and we're basically that. Wal-Mart has shut down all those deals, so it's a different life, different business.
Underhill: What are some of your favorite memories associated with your years in the trading business?
Blair: You know, like I said, when I was a kid, it was just fun. You were herdin' sheep, ridin' in somebody's wagon, doin' a lot of.... For a kid, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. You basically played all the time. That's what you did. In lamb season they were all yours. There were 3,000 of those lambs, and a lot of times you had what they called "pee-wees" you had to take care of. You fed 'em and we always had lambs and baby goats to feed, and catch prairie dogs. We had a prairie dog farm in our back yard. We had rabbits, we had a baby coyote. Used to get out there with a fly rod, and when the bats would be flyin' around, and chase 'em with a broom. For a kid, it was a great life, it was fun. Go arrowhead huntin', you know. Everywhere you went around there, there was pottery and different things like that. My mother, like I said, she was a teacher, so she.... Actually, like I said, she taught us at home for our grade school years. She integrated all that into our learnin' about stuff. It was interesting.
As I got older.... Like I said, to be a trader, you have to be a people person, and I think I'm a pretty good people person. I just enjoy meetin' the people. Like my Uncle Lij said, "kissin' babies and pattin' ladies on the butt." It's kinda show biz. Everybody comes to the store. You get to see everybody and talk to people. I think that's what I enjoy about it. You get to see people, you get to talk to people. You know, Eddie the Breadman--the guy that delivers the bread was always known as Eddie the Breadman. You know all his kids, you know his family, you know everything. That's the fun part of it. Like I said, seein' the kids get off the school bus every day, just watchin' 'em grow up. My brother worked for me for a couple of years, and he married a girl that used to get off the bus here every day--Debbie. Just watched 'em grow up. Seein' 'em have little kids of their own. Makes you feel old sometimes. I think that's what I enjoy about it. Any kind of business like that where you meet people, you get to meet people every day, and tourists come by. You get to hear about different places. Just people, meeting people, that's what's nice about it.
Underhill: Any regrets?
Blair: (sigh) You know, sometimes the grass always looks greener. It looks like it'd be nice to have a job at the post office or with NAU or somethin', where you had health insurance--we don't have health insurance, can't get health insurance. But it beats havin' a real job. I've always kinda resisted doin' that, havin' a real job. Sometimes you wish you'd.... You know, another ten years or fifteen years, you'd have a check comin', be retired or somethin' like that. I've enjoyed it. I doubt very seriously if I'm gonna be doin' anything else for the rest of my life, no matter how much I.... Like I said, I wish I had health insurance or something.
Underhill: What do you think the future is for business on the reservation?
Blair: You know, it's easy, the older you get, to become more cynical. I remember the Jacks sold Shiprock Trading Post to R. B. Foutz in 1950, 'cause they thought the trading post era was over. They said, "It's done." It's changed, you know. It's changed a bunch, but I don't think it's done. I might not recognize it in twenty or thirty years from now, but I think it's gonna be.... Trading posts, basically, it's a service business is what you're doin'. My mom and dad were more so, maybe--they were the liaison between the Navajos and the dominant society out there, but you still do that to a certain extent today. I don't realize how different a place this is, but people come and they say, "This is a little different out here." I may not recognize it, but I think it'll be somethin' goin' on.
Underhill: What else would you like to add?
Blair: I told about all my stories, I think. (chuckles) Nothin' that I can think of. It's only been two hours. I can usually burn up a day or two tellin' stories. But that's about all I can think of. I'm sure I'll think of somethin' when I leave.
Steiger: I have one kind of inconsequential question. You were talking about when you were selling wagons, you would take the wagons in trade?
Blair: Oh, yeah.
Steiger: So what would you do with those wagons?
Blair: Sell used wagons. (laughter) If people would trade in their saddles, we sold saddles and stuff like that. People would trade in their saddles and buy a new saddle. You'd sell the old saddle to some guy that wasn't as well- off. My dad tells stories about people writin' home from the railroad, you know, and would send a check to pay the bill, or send money to pay the bill for their wife, and tell my dad, "Make sure she feeds the horse. Make sure she buys grain for the horse." In those days, especially, you were the go-between between the Navajos and the dominant culture. And I talk about doin' ten things in the trading post-- probably then you did a hundred different things. It was a struggle to make a living. You had to do anything. There's an impression that "God, these traders got rich." I know most of 'em, they're just all gettin' Social Security checks. A guy one time said, "I heard your uncle made $100,000 a year at Aneth." You know, my uncle was at Aneth. And I asked my uncle one time and he said, "Heck, our gross sales were $60,000. It's pretty hard to make $100,000 when the whole business only did $60,000 a year or somethin' like that." So it's pretty hard.
Oh, one thing I would like to [talk about]. In the fifties, the first thing that came along was the uranium. There was a uranium boom on the reservation. It seemed like everybody, all of a sudden you were seein' strangers at the store, and everybody had a geiger counter and they were gonna get rich. (laughter) I'm serious! Everybody was gonna get rich. And Navajos were out there. I remember one guy that worked for us found a petrified log that was like pure uranium, but that was it. But everybody had a geiger counter. And so, boy, I was just a little kid, and this was exciting, because all of a sudden you saw people at the store, rather than the same customers.
Then they had the oil field boom. Red Mesa was just below Aneth, Utah. Red Mesa Trading Post was only about 200 yards from the Utah state line. Whenever the surveyors would come out, they'd pay me fifty cents or a quarter or something like that, and I'd go show 'em where the stake was, where the section marker was.
But the oil boom came, and we didn't have electricity. And we sold gas, and we had one of those old pumps that you fill up. You pump it by hand, and it fills up that glass thing. Well, if you were fillin' up like one car a week, givin' 'em five dollars' worth of gas, that was big business. But then they had these Hal Burton [phonetic spelling] oil trucks come, and they had 150-gallon tanks, and you're goin' (pantomimes pumping gas) to fill that glass thing up. It probably held twenty gallons. So my dad bought a World War II K.W. surplus generator, and then we had one light bulb hangin' in the kitchen. At first we only turned it on at night, or when somebody needed some gas pumped--we turned the generator on. That really changed the whole.... I mean, like I said, there were no roads, and then all of a sudden they were just bulldozin' roads everywhere for this oil deal. And that was cash business, people comin' in there. And the thing was, you were doin' it all behind the counter. It's not like a convenience store where you just check everybody out. That was a lot of work. And I remember my parents. They were so eager for the business, people would come by in the middle of the night and want gas--they had a buzzer, people would get up. So it changed the whole complexion of the business.
Underhill: And how did it impact the Navajo?
Blair: Well, they had jobs, there were things goin' on. They ended up, by the trickle-down effect or whatever, they ended up with jobs. Guys that my dad got jobs at Superior Oil or somethin' like that, probably started out as laborers or somethin' like that, retired after thirty years. It impacted everybody.
That's it!
Underhill: Do you have any other questions?
Cole: No.
Underhill: It's been wonderful--we knew it would be!
Blair: Well, thank you.
Underhill: We really appreciate the time you've taken to do this.
Blair: Well, I'm glad you found the place here. (laughter) Brad's directions.... I told you two-and-a-half hours.
Cole: You said an hour-and-a-half.
Blair: Did I say that? No, I couldn't have said that!
[END OF INTERVIEW]

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HANK BLAIR INTERVIEW
NAU.OH.75.23
United Indian Traders Association
[BEGIN SIDE 1]
This is Karen Underhill for Northern Arizona University. We're here at Totsoh Trading Post in beautiful downtown Lukachukai, with Hank Blair. It is Thursday, August 13, [1998], at 11:00 a.m. [Also present are Lew Steiger, who is operating the recording equipment, and Brad Cole from Northern Arizona University.]
Underhill: Hank, we'll start with where and when you were born.
Blair: Well, I was born May 26, 1947, in Farmington, New Mexico. We lived at Red Mesa Trading Post, but Farmington was the nearest hospital, so that's where I was born.
Underhill: And who were your parents?
Blair: My dad was Bradley Blair and my mother was Carolyn Reknee [phonetic spelling] Blair.
Underhill: And how did your dad come to be at Red Mesa?
Blair: My dad was from Kentucky, and he was one of three brothers who eventually ended up in the trading post business. The oldest brother, Raymond, who was the first to come to Arizona, was in the Marine Corps in China in the thirties. And the lady that was to become my Aunt Marilene [phonetic spelling], was the daughter of George Bloomfield at Toadlena Trading Post. Her sister, as I understand, put her name in a pen pal magazine, and my uncle who was in China, in the Marine Corps, started writing to her, and of course she said, "If you're ever in Toadlena, New Mexico, come see me." He was discharged, I guess, in California, and he rode a freight train to Gallup and hitchhiked to Toadlena, and when they saw [each other], I guess they just said, "This is it, we'll get married." And then my dad was in World War II, and he came out after he got out of the service, and my Uncle Raymond's brother-in-law, Roscoe McGee, offered my dad a job at Red Mesa Trading Post, and that's how he ended up out there. And then Elijah, my younger uncle, is also considered a World War II veteran. I think he got out in 1946, and the same guy, Roscoe McGee, offered him a job, so the three brothers all ended up in the trading post business.
My mother is from New Britain, Connecticut. She was a schoolteacher, and she was a teacher at Teec Nos Pos Boarding School--two teachers. She taught the second grade. I guess the other lady taught the first--Sophie Prucop [phonetic spelling], she's still alive.
And my dad--at Red Mesa, Teec Nos Pos is fifteen miles away, and that's where they got the mail. My dad went to the trading post and the guy who was the trader there--I can't remember who he was--but he said, "There's a cute new schoolteacher up at the school." So that's how my dad and mom met, and that was in 1945 or 1946, somewhere along in there.
Underhill: What are some of your early memories from Red Mesa?
Blair: From Red Mesa? Well, for a kid, you know, what I remember, it was just a great life. You know, I mean, you were out in the middle of nowhere and you had goats and sheep and horses and cows and dogs. The store was filled with all kinds of strange stuff--saddles, the merchandise and everything. For a kid, it was the neatest thing in the world. You could go a hundred miles in any direction and not hit a fence. I think that scared the hell out of my mother, from New Britain, Connecticut. She used to tie us on a leash to the clothesline. She was afraid we'd run away or something. I mean, if we went, it was just, like I said, forever to go anywhere. Like I said, for a kid, it was just neat.
My mom taught us at home 'til I went to the second grade. I lived with my grandmother in Farmington, but then we came back and I think she taught me until I was in the sixth grade. And my sisters--I have three sisters, and later one brother--much later. There was no electricity, [we had] outdoor plumbing. We got water from the windmill, and I remember we had a tank and running water, as far as I remember. And I know that they used to go down to the spring and haul water in a bucket, but there was a windmill there. And a wood stove. I remember taking a bath every Wednesday whether you needed it or not. (chuckles) I think the stove was half propane--or in those days, it was butane-- and half wood. I remember my mom heatin' up water, and we had a big washtub in the middle of the kitchen. Either Coleman lanterns or kerosene lanterns, and takin' a bath, like I said, every Wednesday night. I have a sister that they still do, every Wednesday, whether you need it or not. (laughs) They live in town.
Like I said, especially for a kid, I just really have fond memories of it. You're out there by yourself. The trading post, you weren't so busy that you were always doin' something. It wasn't like there was a customer there every day, every hour. It was kind of a casual, leisurely life.
Underhill: And what did you think of the customers when you were small?
Blair: You know, we were fascinated. I think because my mother and father didn't grow up around here, they were fascinated by the Indians and the culture and everything like that. They passed that on to us. It was just a neat life. We used to go to ceremonies and stuff like that. Go to squaw dances. And we'd go stay with neighboring families when we were little.
It was kind of different at Red Mesa, compared to some other trading posts. There was no mission, no school, so you were kinda by yourself. One thing that you didn't see, you didn't have like a family that lived right next to the store or something like that. You didn't have a mission, so you didn't see the same people. Most of the other trading posts, there was a mission or a school or something right next to it. This was kind of isolated by itself. The windmill actually--it wasn't our well, it belonged to the Navajo Tribe, so that was in your leases, and it's still probably in the leases today, that you had to.... You know, that was your well, you couldn't block it off, you had to provide access to Navajo livestock. So people came to the store with sheep and goats and--you know, like I said, my mom was always afraid we'd just go with 'em when they left, and sometimes we did. I mean, as we got older, we'd just go home with 'em and stuff like that. As a kid, it was really pretty neat.
Underhill: And when did you learn to speak Navajo?
Blair: Well, you learned to speak in the store, probably. You know, you learned how to count and what the names of all the stuff was, 'cause whether you wanted to or not, you ended up workin' in the store. So you learned different things, and you learned different things about the livestock and that kind of stuff. You learned how to.... You know, because you bought livestock, you knew how to say béégashii tsa’ii, that's a cow or female. Deenásts’aa’ was a buck or a ram. So you learned those kind of words.
Underhill: How were you treated by Navajo folks when you were a kid?
Blair: You know, when I was a kid I don't really think I thought about it. Now, I see people that come by. You know, they come and they say, "I knew you when you were a little boy," and stuff like that. And we were really part of the community. I don't think you thought about it then. You have people come by at my uncle's fiftieth anniversary. Kathy and Rhonda's kids came and said, "I'm tired of everybody sayin', 'I knew you when you were that big.'" And I said, "I'm fifty-one years old and they're comin'...." (laughs) You know, the same thing. I can tell when I see somebody come in the store, they'll come over here, and they'll be lookin' at me and they'll be goin' like this, "I knew him when he was that big," and I may not remember exactly who they are. We haven't lived at Red Mesa in thirty-some years, but I still have kids my age, and older people and stuff, they come in. We made a lot of friends. My dad was there twenty years, so he made a lot of friends over the years.
Underhill: And what did you think you wanted to do with your life when you were small?
Blair: Well, I wanted to be a cowboy! (laughs) And I think my dad kinda.... He had an uncle that was a dentist back in Kentucky, and he used to read all the--and I guess in his office he had all the old, in the waiting room he had all these old cowboy magazines. I think my dad and my uncles, they read all those, and they wanted to be cowboys. We rode horses and we were out there yippie-ki-yi-yayin' through the sand dunes and stuff. You wanted to be a cowboy, you know. Or an Indian. (chuckles) We were the only Anglo kids for 50-100 miles. There were probably others, but not very many. We were the minority.
Underhill: How did the store operate then? Were you using a bull pen?
Blair: It was a bull pen store, old bull pen store. The clerk, whoever it was, had to get--it was one item at a time. And that's how you learned to speak Navajo, because they want "(in Navajo) ____________," or "__________" tomatoes, and you just go down the line and [point]. (laughter) "Beans?" "No." And they go, "___________," that's beans. Okay, I'll remember that. I'll try to remember that one. And so that's how you learned Navajo, because you had to learn the name of everything. They'd say, "I want ..." something, and you'd have to figure out exactly what it was.
Everything was on credit, there was no cash money. The Navajos paid their bill in the spring with the wool, and in the fall with the lambs, and odds and ends--like rugs or a cow or different things like that. But it was all credit, or barter, I guess. Even us, I remember going to Farmington, to the Farmington Mercantile, which was the wholesale house where we got everything. I remember my dad, we wanted to go out and eat, my dad would go down to the wholesale house and draw ten dollars on their account, cash, so we could go eat.
I remember somebody comin' in when I was a kid, probably came home from working on the railroad or somethin', with a twenty-dollar bill and bought like a bottle of pop or something, and my dad and mom were emptying all the piggy banks and everything, trying to get change for a twenty- dollar bill. Especially early on, it wasn't a cash business--it was all on the tab. That's the way it was.
Underhill: And how often did someone not pay?
Blair: You know, I don't really remember that. I know there was a lot of pressure on people, on my dad, to collect those bills, because that was--I'm sure it got a little scary. You waited six months to get paid, and they had so much money on the tab. You weren't talkin' about.... You know, it seems nowadays people talk about in the millions of dollars. You're talking about a trading post was doin' $60,000 a year. And it was competitive. People nowadays talk about, "Gosh, what do you do with Basha's, competing against Basha's Supermarket?" My dad had R. B. Foutz on one side, and So-and-So on the other side, and it was competitive, because you had to take care of your customers or somebody else would get 'em, and they wouldn't pay you. But it was really--I think in those days it was a lot [easier]. They needed you just as much as you needed them-- you know, the customers. It was quite different. You both existed because of each other, you know. You were selling coffee, salt, and sugar. We're not talking about.... Later on he probably sold 'em Levi's and shoes and stuff like that, but the whole inventory of the store probably wasn't $10,000. You basically sold basics: flour, salt, sugar, grease for the wagon. I remember the axle, the hubs--those metal hubs, you know--for the wagons. We sold wagons. It was like a used car lot. My mom has movies of puttin' wagons together. It was like a big event. It probably came in on the truck, we're puttin' new wagons together, people helpin' us put the wagons together. You traded 'em in. It was quite the deal.
Underhill: How much animosity was there between traders in this competitive situation?
Blair: It was sort of like a friendly competition. I'm sure there were times that there was kind of.... I'm sure you've heard this from others, but it was like, "These are my customers. Leave my customers alone!" When you bought the store, you bought the customers. That was part of the "blue sky" or whatever, you know, you bought the customers. But it was sort of a friendly competition.
A story my dad used to tell--he and Kelly McGee. Everybody kinda knew how much everybody bought. You knew how much the business was. So whoever the trader was at Teec Nos Pos, my dad and Kelly McGee, they were hauling the wool to town. And so they took a bag and usually bought 200- 300 bags of wool. Well, they took a bag and they put "Red Mesa Wool, 400 and something" on it, like that, and set it on the side of the truck, and then stopped where it was showin' at the trading post, and went in and bought a pop, and howdy and shake with the trader. Well, the guy's lookin' out there and he's going, "Geeminee Christmas! They bought 400 bags of wool!" (laughter) And they just had a pop and went to town. And by the time they got to town, Teec Nos Pos had a phone, well, everybody in town had heard about it. You're talking about a limited number of customers with a limited number of assets. So if somebody somehow got.... You know, man, what are they doin' that they got 400 bags of wool?! It kind of threw shock waves into the deal, you know. That was kind of a story my dad.... I think Kelly McGee, they were kind of jokesters, you know, they did that.
Underhill: Were there other kinds of things you remember like that?
Blair: Not ... really. But like I said, you knew most everybody, and some of 'em, they were family. A lot of the families were related. I grew up callin' everybody my aunt and uncle. My Uncle Raymond, who had married into a big Mormon family, the Bloomfields, they were related to everybody. So they called my mom and dad aunt and uncle, and it wasn't until I was in high school I realized that we really weren't related to all these people. (chuckles) It was kind of a close-knit deal.
Underhill: In terms of the business relationship at Red Mesa, how did the partnership work for your dad?
Blair: You know, Roscoe had about six stores, I think-- Roscoe McGee did. He had about six stores, which my dad was a partner in one of 'em. Like I said, my dad was lucky to get involved with it, 'cause he was a nice guy, he enjoyed the reservation, he enjoyed the Navajos, and he passed that on to my dad. He enjoyed livestock. That was a big part.... You know, the Red Mesa, they were always trying to improve the sheep, the cows: they would bring bulls out and sell 'em, bring rams out and sell 'em--horses--try to improve the stock. It wasn't an altruistic deal--if they have better sheep, better wool, then they can buy more stuff. They have better cows. Roscoe was kind of a frustrated cowboy. He had a ranch and stuff, and he enjoyed that kind of stuff. That became part of the business. We were always sellin' rams and bulls and stuff like that, tryin' to improve the stock. And still, have good stock there. I remember when we moved to Kayenta, the traders there didn't buy or trade livestock, and you could tell by looking, the sheep and everything, the quality of 'em, the cows and everything like that, weren't as good, because the trader, that wasn't his interest.
I remember when we moved to Kayenta, you'd see the sheep people. My dad started buying livestock. Nobody had bought livestock, so you'd see, "Gee, these are scabby-lookin' sheep." (laughter) And my dad, I'm sure, started doin' the same thing, started sellin' bulls and stuff like that. But they had a good relationship, you know. Roscoe, I think, helped my dad out a lot. My dad and my uncles made him quite a bit of money and it worked out. I think my dad was there twenty years, and my uncles off and on were in partners with the same people--basically the same family.
Underhill: When you were a child, what was the lamb and wool season like?
Blair: Well, for a kid, gees, it was just like your dad bought 3,000 new pets for you (laughter) during lamb season, you know. We had, I'd said, 3,000 lambs. And then when I was a young kid, at the end of lamb season, they herded them to Farmington and loaded 'em on the train, you know. It took two or three weeks, and I would go out and stay with Harry Clark and Keet Seely Bynanni [phonetic spellings] in a tent, you know. It seemed like that I went the whole way. My mom said I'd stay one night and want to come home (laughs), have to take a bath or somethin'. We had ticks in our ears. Like I said, for a kid, it was like your dad just bought you 3,000 new pets. We got to play with all of 'em. In wool season, they were bringin' the wool in, weighin' the wool, sackin' the wool, and had a big ol' tin barn my dad built. Don Walker built it for my dad. He was the guy that was kinda the reservation handyman. He could carpenter, plumb, electrician, and he built a lot of the trading posts. He was the guy that always came out and added-onto 'em. I remember him gettin' mad at me for drivin'--you know, I got a hammer and a bunch of his nails, started drivin' 'em into everything that was laying around on the ground--two-by-fours and everything else. It was excitement, it created excitement around the store. People came to the store. White people used to bring their wool to the store in wagons and stuff like that. That was big time, that was a lot of fun.
Underhill: And when did your dad sell Red Mesa?
Blair: In 1966, I believe.
Underhill: And you moved into Farmington, though?
Blair: Well, yeah. I went to high school there. We came out on the weekends, about every weekend we'd come back out to the store. They built the highway in 1962, and my dad moved the trading post about seven miles to the highway. In 1962, he built the new store out on the highway.
Underhill: What did he have to do with the Navajo Tribe to move the trading post?
Blair: You had to get the lease approved. And at that time probably we were dealing more with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was about that time, though, that they started turnin' it over to the tribe. But I would say a lot of it was with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. You had to get a lease, you had to get permits to drill wells and stuff like that. And we moved to the highway.
Underhill: And how did that move to the highway change the nature of the store?
Blair: Well, the building on the highway, it changed the business. Red Mesa was kind of a poor community, a livestock community, and everything like that. You weren't doin' any more business, but you had to pay for that building. So I think it was kind of a traumatic experience for my dad with that. You built a brand new building, but you're doin' the same amount of business. The highway didn't bring that much more business--probably took some of it away. It was kind of a slow business.
Underhill: What kind of services did your mom and dad early on, and later your dad, provide to folks, other than just the dry goods and....
Blair: My dad was a railroad retirement agent, and I don't exactly understand exactly what it was, but that took care of the people that worked on the railroad. You know, they signed up to work on the railroad, signed up for railroad unemployment, I think is what it was, railroad retirement. And again, that was to create business. You know, your customers had no jobs, had no money, so you were tryin' to find 'em a job. We used to haul people to Idaho to work in the sugar beets, Colorado to work in the sugar beets, pick potatoes. Fire fighting--you used to take people, you know, they had crews. You were tryin' to get people jobs, you know, so they'd have money to spend at the trading post.
You signed people up for Social Security. I remember that bein' a big deal because a lot of 'em didn't even have Social Security numbers. So they got 'em Social Security numbers, got 'em a name that you could write down and read. You know, you named 'em so that they would have a name that they could get a Social Security card. They didn't think they should get Social Security because they hadn't worked, and so you had to show that they had had income over the years and stuff like that. I remember that was a big deal. You translated, people would get letters, you sent the kids off to school. That used to be a big business in the fall--every kid got a trunk--we used to have ‘em in here. I mean, sell hundreds of trunks, 'cause every kid got a trunk, 'cause they sent 'em all off to school. They went to Intermountain; Shawaukwa [phonetic spelling], Oklahoma; Shemaiyo [phonetic spelling], Oregon; Brigham City, [Utah]-- they went everywhere. And that was a big business, to send everybody off to school.
Underhill: Was that a mandatory thing?
Blair: Yeah. They fought it for a long time--they didn't want to send the kids to school. But during the fifties, when I remember, they started sending.... Everybody didn't go to school, they always seemed like they kept one or two home to take care of the sheep and take care of the cows. When the kids went to school, I always wanted to go with ‘em. I didn't know where Brigham City, Utah, was, but I used to think, "Man, that's gotta be the place!" 'cause all my friends were goin' to Brigham City, Utah. "Man, I wanna go!" Brigham City sounded like a big place.
Underhill: So what was Farmington like in high school in those days?
Blair: We were like the country kids that went to town, and it wasn't really a pleasant experience. We lived with our grandmother, she wasn't too thrilled to have us all there. (laughs) That was one thing. I remember we had cousins that lived in town. We used to go to town and stay with them on the weekend or something--sometimes go to a movie. We were just the country bumpkins when we'd go downtown to the Roy Rogers serial. They'd give you a quarter, go to the movie and stay all day and eat popcorn and drink pop. It was a hard adjustment. Like I said, you had 3,000 pets out at the trading post. On a good day, run around and do everything, and it was quite an adjustment to go to town.
There were a lot of cultural differences. We were outsiders. You know, you got it from both sides--especially in high school, I think. You know, when you're an adolescent, you're a lot more sensitive to that kind of stuff--the racism and the different things like that, that went on.
Underhill: Can you describe some of that?
Blair: Well, like I said, we were at the trader's, you know, and we had the people who said, "Well, you're just robbin' those poor Indians. You're takin' all their money." And then it's probably the same people goin', "You're hangin' around with them damned Indians." You were "robbin' them poor Indians," and then there were the people that didn't like you 'cause you associated with them. You were kind of buffeted back and forth.
I think I related this incident once before. I was comin' home from school, probably in junior high school or somethin' like that. There was a guy up the street, a grouchy guy, I don't even remember what his name was, but we all kind of stayed away from his yard, you know. I was walkin' down the street, and he said, "C'mere, Blair kid." I came walkin' over, I was kind of scared. Like I said, he kinda knew everybody on the street--the grouchy guy, that's all. My sister one day said, "Hey, you remember the grouchy guy...." And he called me over and he said, "Tell your dad we don't want them red niggers comin' down our street." I really didn't know.... You know, I was old enough, I kinda figured out what he was talkin' about. We had Navajos, they worked for my dad. They'd come to town, they'd need somethin', they'd come to the house. My mom had people that helped my grandma babysit, wash clothes, and stuff like that. So you had that kinda deal goin' on, you know.
Farmington, at that time especially, was during the oil boom. You had a lot of people from Texas and Louisiana and they were a bunch of rednecks, basically. You know, there was a lot of prejudice and things like that.
Underhill: And how did that make you feel?
Blair: Like I said, it was tough. You were torn because as a kid you want to fit in and everything like that, but then you have your friends and your family and stuff like that, that you don't want to give up and everything like that. So I think it ended up bein' we were kinda outsiders. And not just me, but I think a lot of the traders kids put up with the same thing.
Underhill: Were there any Navajo students at Farmington High School?
Blair: Very few. At that time, the Navajo Methodist Mission, which is right there in Farmington, was a big school. Most of the Navajos went there. But considering the size of the population [of] Farmington, there were probably ten or fifteen that went to high school there. Most of the Navajos went to Navajo Mission. Navajo Mission beat Farmington High School in football and everything. They kinda recruited, you know. They picked the cream of the crop of all the Navajos on the reservation--education- wise or things like that. The chairman of the Navajo Tribe, one of the past ones, he went there. And the reason he went there--first they turned him down, and then he had an older brother that was like six-foot-two, 240 [pounds], and the football coach saw him and said, "We want that kid." His mother said, "Only if the little one, the skinny one, goes too." They kind of recruited. So it was a powerhouse. I mean, sports-wise and academics-wise. You'll find, like I said, the [chairman] of the Navajo Tribe. They kind of picked the cream of the crop of the kids. A lot of 'em have gone on to bigger and better things.
Underhill: What did you do when you finished high school?
Blair: I wanted to be a surfer. (laughter) That was when the Beach Boys were big in 1965. I went to California. (laughter) Me and a friend of mine named Wally Price, went to California, we were gonna be surfers. We found out the water is cold and that board is heavy and you can drown! (laughter) Then I went in the service from there. I was in the Marine Corps--went surfing in Vietnam.
Underhill: How long were you in the Marines?
Blair: Two years. Spent sixteen months in Vietnam or overseas.
Underhill: What kind of unit?
Blair: I was in AMTRAX [phonetic spelling], which is like an amphibious tank, is what it is. On my DD-214 is says "sixteen months and one day."
Cole: Were you drafted?
Blair: No. Well, I was in California and my mom wasn't really talkin' to me. I would get this bundle of mail about six weeks late, and it said, "Report to your induction physical September 23," and it was like the twenty-first. I didn't have a car or anything like that, so I didn't go. I went in and enlisted in the Marine Corps, and when I was in boot camp I think I got a warrant for my arrest or something like that, 'cause I hadn't showed up.... Or, I got nasty letters, at the worst.
Underhill: And why was your mom mad at you?
Blair: Probably [because] I wasn't goin' to college or somethin'. I don't remember exactly. I was a rebellious teenager kind of, I guess.
Underhill: So what did you do when you got home in one piece?
Blair: Well, I worked in California for about a year. I had worked, before I went in the service, at a machine shop, Douglas Aircraft, and I worked there for about a year. Then I called my dad and asked if I could come home, and I came home in 1969, I think. I just got [top man?]. There were just too many people out there, you know. You couldn't go anywhere without.... I think two weekends in a row I went to the beach and got hung up on Highway 101 or whatever it was, Pacific Coast Highway, and you could get out of your car and go to Taco Bell and eat and then get back in your car and wait another ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, because the traffic was so bad. In 1969, I came home.
Underhill: How much did the cultural revolution that was going on in society at the time....
Blair: Oh, the sixties or whatever?
Underhill: Yeah, how much did that impact the Navajo Nation?
Blair: Well, I think it impacted the whole country quite a bit. You had all these kids my age that had been sent off to school and everything, comin' back. And the radicalism that was goin' on in the whole nation was goin' on on the Navajo Reservation too. Civil rights was a big thing, and not just in the South, but on the Navajo Reservation too. So there was a lot of activism goin' on in the late sixties and seventies.
Underhill: American Indian Movement?
Blair: American Indian Movement. There was some of that goin' on around the reservation, but I didn't know anybody, really, personally, that was in that. But like I said, the kids my age who had all been off to school and everything like that, they came back. The social programs that the government had come up with, that really impacted the reservation--it impacted the trading post business.
Underhill: For the better or for the worse?
Blair: Well, as far as the trading post, you had customers with money. All of a sudden you had jobs and you had food stamps and all that stuff. You weren't dependent on the wool and the mohair and the lambs, two times a year money comin' in. Moving to Kayenta was a lot different. Red Mesa was a poor, backward kind of a place. Kayenta had the school and the post office and everything like that. It was interesting, at Red Mesa, you had very few people with traditional--you know, their hair in a knot like that, men or women--but nobody spoke English. There were people I'd say, "Yeah, they speak English," but in retrospect, you'd see 'em, and they really didn't. They couldn't hardly speak English. In Kayenta, I remember when I came home from the service, when I came home on leave and stuff like that, and you'd go in the store, and I'd be helping people and they'd be dressed traditionally with their velveteen blouses and everything, and dimes all over, and you'd speak Navajo to 'em, and they could all speak English. It was amazing, to me anyway. It was a different place than Red Mesa. Red Mesa was poor--it still is. It's a poor community. There was a lot of difference. Kayenta, comin' back from the service, it was a fun place. It was "a happenin' place," for me, anyway. It was a lot of fun.
Underhill: And what was Kayenta like then?
Blair: Well, it was a big city, compared to Red Mesa. There was a school, a public school. There was a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. They had two or three trading posts and a motel. There was all kinds of stuff: social, sports, dances, and stuff like that. It was a different place. It was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it, it was neat.
Underhill: How were the dances at that time? Were they also different from the Red Mesa area?
Blair: I'm talkin' about dances like bands and stuff like that--country western dances and stuff like that, which at Red Mesa.... I remember goin' to Mexican Water, you know, when we lived at Red Mesa, goin' and watchin' Tony Curtis in that world-famous movie where he plays....
Underhill: A Roman?
Blair: I don't know, but he's an English guy and he has the Brooklyn accent. I remember watchin' that on a sheet. That was entertainment! At Red Mesa, that was entertainment. You didn't have entertainment at Red Mesa. Then at Kayenta, like I said, there was all kinds of stuff goin' on, compared to.... I don't know how many people lived there then, but it was the big city compared to Red Mesa.
Underhill: And how long did you work there in Kayenta?
Blair: I worked there for three or four years in Kayenta, and for my dad at the trading post. My dad, Bradley and my Uncle Elijah owned that store, and they owned the Whetherlin [phonetic spelling] Motel. My dad had bought the store and the motel. He didn't want to buy the motel, but the guy wouldn't sell the store without the motel. My dad didn't know anything about the motel business. Everybody that he knew in Farmington had gone broke in a motel, and so he didn't want to buy it, but he finally ended up, he and my Uncle Elijah bought the store and the motel. The store was probably about the size of this store. It was a small store, and it was really not the--the Warren Trading Post was the bigger store--I mean, as far as business-wise, because I think [he was] a more aggressive trader at the time. My dad started buyin' livestock, that nobody in Kayenta had done. Started buyin' wool and stuff like that-- doin' the trading post stuff. And so he really transformed the business there. By the time he left, the store was about ten times as big as it was when he went there.
In 1967-1968, when they had the big blizzard, they also had a big piñon crop the next year, and my dad bought several hundred thousand pounds of piñons. And with the money, he expanded the size of the store. So he really took that store from, like I said, about 2,000 square feet to about 10,000 square feet. It turned into a big deal.
Underhill: And how heavy was the tourism there?
Blair: At that time it was a lot compared to--you know, you had the Monument Valley, you had tourists coming. You know, like I said, compared to Red Mesa, it was like bein' at Disneyland for us. They made commercials and movies, and there were all kinds of tourists and stuff like that comin' in. It was actually the Whetherlin Motel, and then there was a Monument Valley Inn, which is now the Holiday Inn. Reuben Heflin and Mildred Heflin, who had owned Kayenta Trading Post and the Whetherlin Inn, had built that Holiday Inn out on the highway out there. So there were two motels there. In the wintertime it was like one traveling salesman staying at the __________ motel business wasn't very great, but it turned into bein' a big asset, as far as business- wise. There was Bill Crawley's [phonetic spelling] Tours. I think there was just one tour company then, but people takin' people out to Monument Valley. And Bill Crawley and his brother--I can't think of his name right offhand, but they were doing tours, and they brought all the commercials in, and the movies, they worked on the movies and stuff like that. So that was exciting, got to see John Wayne, and a bunch of Italians. They used to make those Italian spaghetti westerns out there. It was exciting.
Underhill: And was that when you were in the movies?
Blair: I tried out for deals. I worked on the movies, I worked as a wrangler and my sister did. We used to rent our horses to commercials and stuff like that. Like I said, it paid better to work on 'em than it did to be in 'em, unless you had a union, SAG [Screen Actors Guild] card, or something like that.
Steiger: What was John Wayne like?
Underhill: That crossed my mind too.
Blair: Tall guy. They made a deal for John Ford. It was like a documentary, a tribute to John Ford, and they had a lot of the old stars: John Wayne, Andy Devine, and a lot of people that had been in those old John Wayne movies, Harry Goulding came back, and his wife. A lot of the Navajos that had been in all the old movies, Stagecoach--the Stanleys, there used to be three brothers. I was watching Stagecoach the other night. There's Johnny, Jack, and John-- big, tall guys. They were always in the front of the Indian crowd scenes. They were all there. I think John Ford, John Wayne, and those guys were famous for (chuckles) drinking a little bit. I think that's what they did, drink and play cards while they were down there filming this documentary and stuff.
Underhill: And where did they stay?
Blair: At Gouldings' where they had made all the movies at. Andy Devine, I met in the store. He was a great big guy, and they had to fly him in by himself, because the airport at Monument Valley at Gouldings' is kind of short, and they had to fly him in and out by himself in the plane, because he was so big--a large person. He was a big guy.
Underhill: Who are some of the other famous people you remember coming through?
Blair: Just different actors. Robert Blake. They made Electroglide in Blue, out in Monument Valley. I've seen Robert Redford and different people. And then they had a lot of people that just came to see Monument Valley. My brother-in-law, my wife's brother, we were at the Holiday Inn and Robert Blake was sitting behind us, and I said, "That's Robert Blake." He said, "Who in the hell's Robert Blake?!" I said, "Remember Tell Them Willie Boy is Here?" I don't know if you remember that movie, but Robert Redford was in that. So he goes, "Oh, I know who that...." Well, he's thinking of Robert Redford. He's looking at this blondy guy over here, and Robert Blake is sitting right behind him. So he starts going, "Robert Blake, kick his ass anytime." And I'm goin', "Gees!" And finally I said, "He's sitting right behind you!" And he goes, "Who?" "Right there." And he said, "Oh, I was thinkin' about that blondy guy." (laughs) Robert Redford! Robert Blake was just sitting behind him laughing. "I could kick his butt any day." (laughs)
Charles Bronson, him and Henry Fonda. And they made Once Upon a Time in the West, they made that one, a bunch of Italian yahoos. They were bad. They were just ugly Italians. Instead of ugly Americans, they were ugly Italians.
Underhill: And what did your Navajo friends think of all the movie makers and Italians?
Blair: Around Kayenta, they were kinda used to it, because they had made a lot of movies there, and a lot of commercials. Remember they put that Mercury up on top of that bluff? Then Clint Eastwood, I never did see him, but they did film that movie The Eiger Sanction. I don't think he may have even been there. They climbed that totem pole in the movie. It was somebody else did it, but anyway his double. Eiger Sanction. Like I said, the Japanese ramen noodle commercial my sister did. We got cases of ramen noodles and stuff like that to put in the.... We didn't know what they were, they were all in Japanese. We had octopus ramen noodles, and squid ramen noodles. (laughs) But we worked on that one.
Underhill: To back up just a little bit, how active was your family in the rug business?
Blair: You know, kind of passively. I guess we sold a lot of rugs. What you did is, you bought the rugs and then these rug dealers came around and a lot of times they'd trade you jewelry from Gallup for the rugs. I'm trying to think of the guy's name from Farmington. He was a famous one. And he'd come around. This is not very many rugs. I mean, we have in our house, just stacked up--stacks of 'em, with rugs. These guys, they came around. We didn't go out and sell 'em, we just traded 'em to rug dealers and things like that. Alvey Turney [phonetic spelling] out of Gallup, we'd trade jewelry, which we sold to the Navajos for the rugs. You could probably get buried in more rugs than you could sell, so you were tryin' to move those rugs. And in Kayenta you had tourists comin' around, so that was an added bonus. That probably took over, we probably sold more to tourists than we did wholesale. We still wholesale a lot of rugs.
Jackson Clark--he's passed away now--but he was a big rug dealer out of Durango, Colorado, had the Toleptin [phonetic spelling] Gallery. And how he got into the rug business was he was the Pepsi Cola dealer. He was the Pepsi Cola distributor, and people would say, "Can't pay you now, but how about $500 worth of rugs?" He was interested in it, so he, you know.... But even at Kayenta, I remember we used to trade him for rugs at Kayenta. But his Pepsi distributorship, his franchise, didn't extend that far. The guys in Flagstaff got mad at him for delivering Pepsi out there, so he had to quit. But that's how--we traded rugs for Pepsi, traded rugs for down payment on your car. The rugs were something you were always trying to move. Like I said, you could buy more than you could sell, so you had a lot of rugs.
Underhill: And what did you look for in a rug?
Blair: You looked for how straight it is, the design, the artistic quality, the technical quality, and then you look to see how cute she is (laughs)--the lady that made it. That's what my dad.... My mom would be looking through the rug pile, and she'd say, "Goll, how much did you pay for this?! Why did you pay so much for it?!" My dad would say, "She was really cute." (laughter)
You kinda looked at what would sell, you know. You were kind of the liaison between the weaver and the buyer. More so nowadays, you'd say, "What would match people's couches?" They'd come in with the wild colors and you'd say, "You gotta go with the more vegetable dyes or the more pastel colors. Softer colors, natural colors." I'd look at rugs that we bought in the sixties and the seventies, and yellow was really big then. Your Wide Ruins, your yé’iis and all that were yellow. And now, they bring 'em in like that, they just don't.... Like I said, somewhere in Aspen they're not matchin' their couches, they got different colors. Well, that was your part in tellin' the weaver what kind of rugs to make. You didn't really tell her artistically, but just kind of "leave the yellow out," and stuff like that. I don't remember anybody havin' a yellow couch, but it must have matched somebody's furniture, because [in] the sixties or seventies, look at all those old rugs with a lot of yellow. Like Wide Ruins is the whole--that yellow, which was a vegetable dye. It was a big-time color then.
Underhill: And with three posts in Kayenta, how did that work? Was there friendly competition there?
Blair: Well, there was one guy that was kind of a jerk. He shall remain nameless, but he was a crook. He worked for Babbitts [and how they] did it, was they paid 'em kind of a commission, and they were well-paid, but Babbitts was just happy as long as they were making money. I think this guy in Kayenta cost Babbitts a lot of money in the long run, because Babbitts wanted to build a big supermarket in Kayenta. And because of this guy, it kept 'em out of there for a long time. And like I said, Babbitts, they didn't know what he was doin'--and they may have. They may have known, but gosh, that money comin' in is good. He was a crook.
Underhill: How did the small traders view the Babbitts, in general?
Blair: You know, we never.... Until we moved to Kayenta, they were mostly on the western side of the reservation. Kayenta and Keams Canyon--Oraibi was probably the farthest east they came. When we moved to Kayenta, we had Kayenta, Cow Springs, Toadlena, Tuba City, and then down at Oraibi. They had Cedar Ridge. I don't know how many they had. So you came in contact with 'em. We bought stuff--they were a wholesale supplier. We bought Pendletons from 'em, hardware from 'em. I don't remember any animosity. They really were easy competition, really. They were, what do you call it, distant manager. They ran it from Flagstaff, so they weren't a lot of competition. So probably people thought they were, you know, give 'em a couple more stores. (chuckles) They weren't, what do you call it, absentee management. So they really weren't that competitive.
Underhill: How would you describe traders as a group? Was there a strong sense of community, or people were fairly isolated?
Blair: I think overall there was probably a sense of community. Because my parents weren't from there, and we weren't part of that family--there's a lot of family petty jealousies and stuff like that also--but I think as a group, pretty much you got along with everybody. There were some cliques, you know. I think just like any organization or group of people in the same business, you had people that didn't like other people. And like I said, I don't know whether it was just my parents not being part of that, as far as being a blood or long-time deal, or my parents' character. My parents weren't really people that feuded with other people, or something like that. We kind of got along with everybody. You really, running the store, you didn't have time to be real social. And I've heard other traders' kids say this. I've looked in the window of every trading post on Sunday, when they were closed, 'cause that's the only time you got to go. You'd take off and drive down and you'd look in the window. I remember lookin' in the window at Red Rock across the mountain. The roads were not paved or anything. It wasn't like you were, "Gosh, let's drive over eighty miles of dirt road to visit somebody!" (laughter) It was the fact that people worked hard and they worked a lot. There wasn't a lot of socializing, but there were--you know, you knew a lot of the people, you grew up, I went to school with 'em and stuff like that. I think the eighty miles of dirt road, that would kind of--you know, when it takes you three or four hours to do that.... Nowadays, you'd just be there in an hour or so. I think that kind of isolated people a little bit.
[END SIDE 1, BEGIN SIDE 2]
Underhill: This is Karen Underhill with Northern Arizona University in beautiful downtown Lukachukai, Totsoh Trading Post. It's Part Two of an interview with Hank Blair, and it is Thursday, August 13, 1998, and it's noon.
Hank, we were talking about transportation, and how difficult it was to get around in early years. There's a story about your mom?
Blair: Well, I remember we had a 1950 or 1951, two-door, Ford coupe. There was my mom and myself, and then my little sister. I couldn't have been much more than a toddler, and my sister, I don't know if she could walk, but we were goin' to Farmington in that Ford, and at Rattlesnake, which is just before Shiprock, the motor mounts on the car broke, and the engine went into the radiator, and here was my mom stranded out on the dirt road with two little kids. I remember we rode in on a big truck. [I found out] later it was a propane truck. The roads were bad. The earliest memories that I have are of being stuck somewhere. We'd be playin' in the sand and my dad's over there diggin' and cussin' and cuttin' down sagebrush to put under the wheels of the car. I remember we got a 1958 GMC pickup, used, from somebody--and that was the first pickup truck we had. And four-wheel drive, we probably didn't get one of those 'til they paved all the roads. The roads were bad. I remember taking two hours to go sixty miles on a dirt road in a car.
About gettin' picked up by the propane man: about four or five years ago, I was in the mall at Christmas with my mom, and some guy comes up and goes "Carolyn!" and she goes "Ed!" And they talk. "This is Hank." "Oh, I haven't seen him since he was this little," or whatever. So the guy leaves and I said, "Who in the heck is that, Mom?" She said, "You don't remember him?! That's the guy that picked us up in the propane truck on the side of the road." And I said, "Mom, I was this tall! I don't remember Ed, the propane guy." (laughter)
The roads were bad. Some of my mom's relatives from Connecticut came to visit her one time, and after drivin' out on the dirt road they said, "Carolyn must really love this guy, to live out here in the middle of nowhere!" But the roads were bad.
And getting back, like I said, my earliest memories of bein' stuck. I told my mom that, and she said, "It was your father! He was always tryin' to make it through that sand dune!" Instead of takin' the long way around, he was gonna go across that wash. And the washes would be runnin', you'd go to.... Between Shiprock and Farmington, if it rained, there were two or three big washes, you know, that you'd have to sit and wait 'til the water went down before you could cross 'em. And if you tried to cross, there was always a car buried in the sand to give you that warning, "Don't try it!" 'cause there's quicksand, and it'd just suck you right up when the water was runnin'.
My dad one time--Jake Yellowman's youngest son, he was born, and the mother was in her forties then, and she had what they call a prolapsed uterus or something like that. My grandmother, who was a nurse, was there, and there was a missionary lady around who was a nurse also. They came to this trading post and they said, "Somethin's wrong." So my dad took my grandmother, who was a nurse, and this missionary lady who was a nurse, out there. And they thought, "Well, these two nurses will fix it." They were just scared spitless, they didn't know what to do. And so Old Man Jake, who was an old, old-timer, and he was quite a bit older than the lady, he went and got some herbs and stuff and washed up and everything like that, and he used his fist to push the uterus back into his wife. And then my dad and my grandmother took her to the hospital in Shiprock, and the wash was runnin' and it took 'em about all day to go sixty miles. So the roads were.... And there was no phone.
I remember we had a shooting at the old store at Red Mesa. They were having a branding up by the mesa, and a guy, I think his name was Roy Palmer, he was drunk and he had a rifle, and he crawled up on top of the mesa with a lady. And he was either gonna shoot himself or jump off. And a guy name Bizwoody [phonetic spelling] walked up to the base of the mesa to talk to him, and Roy Palmer shot him and killed him. And I was little, and everybody came to the store. We didn't have a phone, I don't know how they got the police out there. Somebody probably had to drive to Teec Nos Pos to the phone. But I remember people stayed up on the hill above the store to watch for this guy to make sure he didn't come to the store and shoot somebody else. But that was scary. That just came to me. _____ other story. But you didn't have a phone, the doctor was sixty miles away, at least. It was in the Wild West. You were out in the bushes.
Underhill: How prevalent was crime?
Blair: You know, people would steal stuff, but it wasn't like it was dangerous or anything like that. The Navajos had been in this situation with the dominant society for a long time, with the Spanish, and they raided back and forth between the Spanish and the Mexicans. And then the Anglos came, and so it was sort of like a game, "I'll steal this from you, and if you catch me...." And probably on the trader's part, it was probably a paternalistic fear maybe, a little racist. You didn't take it seriously. I mean, you took it seriously, but it wasn't something you called the police over. A lot of times, if somebody stole something, you worked within the Navajo culture. I remember my dad had some new stoves out on the trading post porch one time, and somebody stole one. And so my dad went and got the hand- shaker, the crystal-gazer, to find out what happened to the stove. And she turned in one of her nephews or one of her relatives, and we got the stove back. Like I said, it was kind of like a game or something. It wasn't dangerous or anything like that, but it.... I remember one time we came back to the store and the screen door was gone off the house. "What the heck?! Who stole the screen door?!" Well, a month later, or somethin', we went down to just go picnickin' and visit some families down there, and here was the screen door. They had an apricot orchard, and they needed the screen door to dry the apricots. The thing that's interesting--I mean, they lived about ten miles away. It wasn't a deal where, "Gosh, let's just drive over to the trading post, and let's ride our horse over to the trading post, find a screwdriver and unscrew the screen door. Gosh, that screen door would make a good deal to dry apricots on!" (laughter) Like I said, there was stuff goin' on, but it wasn't....
There used to be a store at Four Corners before I was born, and they left a sixteen-year-old Anglo kid there to guard the store, and he caught somebody stealin' somethin', and the guy took his gun away from him and shot him. And that guy, I grew up knowin' the guy that killed him. He got out of prison. He was around there. Zahnie's boy or Aneth Nez--I can't remember what the guy's name was. But I remember just knowing that as a kid, that he had shot the night watchman at the trading post. This was in the early forties or somethin' like that.
As far as crime, that shoot in Deswood was the most serious thing that I remember happened to anybody. I don't remember any.... As far as alcoholism, there wasn't as much. You know, it wasn't as prevalent. They used to have a bootlegger--I think his name was Joe Lansing. And how he used to do it was, he would hide like a pint of wine behind a post in the corral, and then he would collect the money and tell the people, "It's over there behind that post in the corral." And when we were kids, me and Harrison Clark, a little Navajo kid, we would watch him hide it, and then we'd go around and take it! You know, find the wine, and then he'd have disappointed customers. He'd tell 'em, "It's under that rock over there," and we'd already taken it.
Underhill: And what did you do with it?
Blair: Well, I don't remember drinkin' any of it, but I don't know what we did with it. I think we just gave it to my dad, and he poured it out or somethin' like that.
I remember goin' to a squaw dance, and there would be one drunk, and he was like the.... At the next squaw dance you went to, it would be the one guy. There wasn't really a lot of drinkin' or anything like that. There just wasn't much access to it, although one of the big sellers in the store was raisins and sugar--they used to make raisin jack. Certain people, they'd come in and buy five pounds of raisins and ten pounds of sugar or whatever, and they made raisin jack out of it.
Underhill: You mentioned maybe a slight paternalistic streak among the traders. What characteristics do you think a lot of traders shared in common?
Blair: As far as being paternalistic? I don't really know how to answer that.
Underhill: What makes a good trader?
Blair: I think you have to be a people person, because any kind of a retail business--I don't know if you've ever gone into any business somewhere, and you can tell that guy ain't very good at it. If you can't get along with people-- people who are of a different culture, don't speak the same language as you--if you're a racist, mean, grouchy guy, your customers know that, and it doesn't.... I think the people that were good traders were good people--people people. They liked people--didn't matter what color they were, or what language they spoke, or what religion. The ones that I can think of....
You know, they always talk about traders being characters. Well, they had to be. If you could be workin' in the post office in Aztec, New Mexico, with health benefits and goin' home to your house every evening, why would you want to move to Sheep Snot, Arizona, or somethin' like that, and live in a tent with outdoor plumbin', no electricity, and haul your water from a spring? A guy had to be a little bit of an adventurer.
It's not the safest life. I think especially in the old days, if there was a safety concern, you were out there by yourself. You couldn't call a policeman or anything like that. So I think they had to be a little different.
Underhill: And why do you think a lot of folks stuck with it?
Blair: A lot of it, I think people our age don't realize that comin' out of--my generation--comin' out of the Depression--and even before that I don't think times were that great--that havin' a job or makin' a livin' was a big-- you know, it was a big thing. And I remember my mom thought, being grateful.... You know, after the war, a lot of young couples, you know, the guys got out of the service, they were married, and she was grateful that they had a trading post to themselves. There were a lot of places where people were working at the store just for a place to stay and something to eat. Like I said, a lot of the young couples, the men had been in the service and stuff, and they'd come out, and they were just at the store--they had a place to stay and somethin' to eat. I remember my uncles and people would say, "I worked at the trading post for a month before I knew whether I was even gettin' paid. I was just happy to have a job. I didn't know how much I was makin'. I figured they probably would pay me at the end of the deal." So they were happy to.... Times were a little tougher, so they were happy to be employed and be able to eat. One of my older uncles used to tell us, I guess where he worked you couldn't eat anything out of the store. There were chickens, and you could eat all the eggs you wanted, and kill one chicken a week. That was your board. You got paid room and board, and my uncle wouldn't eat an egg for-- 'cause that's all they ate was eggs. So I think times were different. They were happy to have a job.
Underhill: Not all traders were good.
Blair: Not all traders were good, and not all traders made a livin' at it. I don't know, there's a tendency to think everybody got rich, but there were a lot of traders who went broke. There were a lot of traders that didn't make it, as far as financially. It was a tough way to make a living.
Underhill: For the few who were corrupt, what kinds of corruption have you heard about?
Blair: They talk about guys, they'd have an ax next to the cash register--they didn't even have a cash register-- but they'd charge it to every customer that came in, like it was his. I've heard that--different things--short changed people and stuff like that. You know, short weigh, when they brought the lambs and the wool in and stuff like that, they would short weigh stuff like that. You know, the butcher havin' a heavy thumb when they weighed somethin', and things like that.
Underhill: What would other traders do if they thought someone was corrupt?
Blair: I don't know that you could do anything. I think they just let the.... There's a tendency to think that these poor Indians are too dumb to.... And that's a racist thing. If the traders were robbin' 'em, these Indians must have been pretty damned dumb, to not know that. And the thing is, the Navajos knew it. I would say around those stores and stuff--you know, we talked about this deal of stealing things back and forth--I'd say they probably got even pretty.... Like I said, I think that's a racist.... You know, I mean, you hear people sayin', "You're robbin' those poor Indians," like the Indians didn't know what was happenin' to 'em. They're not dumb. There were bad traders and corrupt traders, but I think the good ones lasted longer than the bad ones did. The deal used to be a lot of times people would come out and they'd think they're gonna make a fortune in five years and move back, buy a hardware store in Farmington or something like that. I think the majority of the traders.... Like I said, there was a lot goin' on that was sort of.... There was an adversarial.... These Navajos had been in conflict with the dominant society for a long time, and they prospered. I mean, there's 250,000 right now. They did pretty well, they survived and they did well.
Underhill: So in the stores that you were involved with, how active were you in the pawn business in the early days?
Blair: You know, we did pawn in both places up until 1973, or whatever it was when the FTC hearings came out.
Underhill: What do you remember about the hearings?
Blair: It was a traumatic deal. No matter what was right or wrong about it, it was a set-up deal. They came to hang the traders. The media was all focused on that, and the outcome was never in doubt of what was gonna happen. It was kind of scary.
Underhill: At the time were you aware that there was an agenda?
Blair: I think it was pretty obvious. The whole bent of the country at that time, there was a lot of "the poor starving Indians. These guys are robbing the poor starving Indians." It was only gonna go one way--right or wrong, that's the way it went.
I just gave a talk. I speak at Diné College up here, and I just gave a talk on pawn a couple of weeks ago to a class up there. And I had done it before, but I learned. Every time we talk about it, and the questions that they ask--all the students were Navajos--and the questions they asked and everything like that, it opened my eyes to a lot of different things. The pawn business has changed. When they cut it out on the reservation--the kind of pawn business we used to do at the trading post has very little to do, is far removed from the pawn business today. It was just another one of those things that you did at the trading post to circulate money, or goods. What you were doing, it's a cash loan business now. Then we did it, most of it was for trade. Somebody came in and got five dollars' worth of groceries and left a bracelet or somethin' for collateral. The traders kept stuff for.... (chuckles) It wasn't a business-like procedure. It was a completely different business. People think in the pawn business that traders pawned that, they wanted to keep that stuff. Nowadays in the pawn business they have a computer program, and if you don't take your pawn out, they won't pawn to you. You accumulate points, and I think it's seven points. If you are late payin', or let pawn go dead, if you accumulate seven points, they cut you off. And a lot of the pawn places will cut you off at four points, because they're in the money-lending business, they don't want that stuff. And a matter of fact, the things that go dead, and most of these places that are successful in the pawn business, they have less than 1 percent of the pawn goes dead. Friends of mine that are down in Tse Bonito, they have 24,000 pawn contracts, and less than 1 percent of 'em go dead. And like I said, in the trading post, the way we did pawn, it was little old ladies that wanted five dollars. You weren't loanin' people money. At this class, they asked, "Well, how much was the most money you loaned?" And I said, "Probably, at the most, $100. Most of it was just little pawn deals." And for us at Kayenta, our business was gettin' so big that the pawn was actually a pain in the butt. You were runnin' a big business, and then you were havin' little old ladies that came in and want to pawn for two dollars. You're fillin' out a pawn ticket, and you're payin' somebody--at that time minimum wage was $1.50 or somethin'. I don't care how you work it out, you're not makin'--it was a pain. So we were kinda glad to get out of it, because it was a different kind of a business than what they're doin' now. We were kinda glad to see it go, because we were.... You're talking about slow-moving things, and clashin' with the hustle and bustle of modern commerce. It was one of the remnants of the old trading post business. We were kinda glad to see it go. [We were] havin' to stop, slow down, and deal with this person.
Somebody asked me in that class, "Why are all the trading posts turning into convenience stores?" And I said, "Why do you think?" And they said, "Well, because nobody wants to run a trading post," or this and that, "and the tribe shut down all the trading posts." And I said, "The reason all the trading posts are turning into convenience stores is because you can make more money in a convenience store. In a trading post, what you're doing, you're running twenty different little business." You were doin' pawn, you're buyin' livestock, you're buyin' wool and mohair, you're sellin' hay, you're fixin' flats, you're writin' letters for people, you're runnin' a bank. I mean, I still do that. If people get to cash their checks on the first of the month, they leave $300-$400 in the vault, I dole it out to 'em $20 at a time. They come in, and you're doin' this stuff. Well, at a convenience store, you're sittin' there, somebody wants a pop, you just sell it. They give you a dollar, you give 'em a pop. There's none of this, "Let's charge that. Let me pawn my bracelet for that car battery, $59.00." Somebody just comes in, they want a car battery, they hand you sixty bucks, you give 'em a car battery.
I've had these guys like Thriftway and these guys [tell me], like a guy put it, "All this community service stuff costs you money. So let's quit doin' that." You don't go into the Safeway supermarket and say, "My husband's in jail, can you give me $400 to get him out?" That doesn't work. At the trading post, that's what happens. People call up.... Yesterday a girl calls up, she's in Salt Lake City, her husband's going to school up there, "Please send my mail and everything up to Salt Lake City." Well, that doesn't pay too much to go get an envelope and put sixty-eight cents' worth of stamps on it and send her check and her food stamps up to Salt Lake City, but that's what you did at the trading post. Like I said, at a trading post, you were runnin' ten different businesses: signing people up for railroad retirement for $50 a month, that was your pay. At one time in the fifties, it was probably $25. That was probably the only cash money my mom saw in a month, so it was a completely different thing.
Underhill: When did you acquire Lukachukai?
Blair: In 1984. I was running.... My dad and my Uncle Elijah owned the store at Kayenta together. My dad passed away in 1983 and it became my mom and my Uncle Elijah, and they did not get along, and I was right in the middle. I was living on Rolaids and Maalox for--I say years, but my wife and I think it was about a year, a little less than a year, actually--about a year--and it was about to kill me. They just didn't get along, and it was my mom's fault. You know, her husband had been killed in a plane crash and she wasn't in any.... We probably could have been a little more considerate of her. It was driving me crazy, so my wife and I, the opportunity came to come over here, and it wasn't that simple, but we ended up with the store. There'd been about five guys here in four years, and gone broke. This was built by Vernon Jack in 1962. He'd been a long-time trader, off and on, over probably thirty or forty years. He'd been at Greasewood, right down the road from here. And he had heart trouble, and his son came out here to run it, and his son didn't really like it. He moved to Kayenta and got a job with the coal company over there. I asked him one time why he left the trading post, and he said, "I thought it was about time I got a real job." And to me, I was scared. I had quit my job over there at Kayenta and looked around and everything. I was afraid I was gonna have to get a real job. That's the last thing I wanted to do, was get a real job. I wanted to be in the tradin' post. He said, "I thought it was about time I got a real job." So he just basically walked off and left this. He sold it to somebody, but they didn't last very long. So we've been here since 1984, fourteen years.
Underhill: And what was involved with the sale? Did you have a lease? You had material goods?
Blair: No, had no lease. There was hardly anything in the store. The only reason the store hadn't been burned down was because the post office was here. They kinda kept the door open to keep the post office goin'. The first time I came over here to look at it, it was probably the first of the month or somethin', and the parking lot was full of cars, and I thought, "Man! these guys are doin' some kind of business!" And I came in the store, and there was not--you could have starved to death in a day. There was not enough to eat. I mean, there was nuthin' in the store. Everybody was here to come in the post office.
Another time while we were looking at it, I came over, and it happened to be some check or something was paid-- everybody was here--and there was absolutely nuthin' in the store, very little. And I thought, "Man, if that many people come to the store, I can make a living doing this. This is neat." And you're dealin' with the tribe, and they are the most screwed up--if my wife was here, she would tell you--she's a Navajo--and the process that they use to give the leases away is the most degrading, humiliating.... Like I said, my wife would be levitating off the ground. It was really.... Their business practices are lacking. It was like a circus. We would come over here, we'd go to the chapter house, and we would talk to the people in the community, and we applied through Economic Development--or whatever they called it then. We spent like a thousand bucks getting a performa made up, financial statements, financial projections. I mean, we had this slick--for a trading post guy, it was a pretty slick presentation. And they had like six or seven people that had applied for the lease.
Underhill: For this place?
Blair: For this place. And like I said, it was an interesting cast of characters (chuckles) that had applied for it. Al Greeve [phonetic spelling] and his wife, who are friends of ours, they had applied for it. And Vicki and myself. There was a guy that owned a topless bar in Continental Divide, New Mexico. What he was gonna do with it, I have no idea. There was a missionary guy, and another guy who was a crook--they had applied for it. The missionary guy was from here. We would go to the chapter house, and there would be four or five people there--six people, ten people. They said, "Well, we're gonna vote." So we came to vote and here is like 100 people there, and the missionary guy has this joy bus, he is unloadin' people. And as they came in the door, they would instruct them, "Vote for this tall, skinny...." He was a tall guy, Doyle Johnson was his name. And so they're sayin', "Vote for this guy." So we all got a color, I think is what it was. All these missionaries that were friends of his were bringin' their congregations in. So we had like a hundred and some people vote, and he got 112 or 113 votes. We got 14, we came in second. And like I said, the proposal--we had submitted this professional proposal. One of the guys in Window Rock showed me their proposal, and it was written on a spiral notebook in pencil, about this long. But they got voted in. And they lasted six months--I don't think even that much. I'd say about three or four months. And my wife and I were livin' in a house with the electricity turned off, and no phone. The phone only worked because my wife's cousin worked for the phone company, and she'd gone in the back and flipped the switch and the phone worked. We had everything we owned in a horse trailer and a pickup. We were gettin' ready--it was like Friday--and we were gettin' ready to move to Farmington, and I was gonna have to get a real job. Wendell Mortenson [phonetic spelling], who's a Navajo guy who worked for Economic Development--and I happened to know him, have known him for a long time, and his family--he called up and said, "Those guys have gone bankrupt--basically have gone bankrupt--and if you want it, be there tomorrow morning." So that's how we ended up with this place. Like I said, it was a circus--it was ridiculous, humiliating, degrading, and you just ended up, because you were already sucked-into the deal.... I mean, it was terrible. The money that we had to open the store we had spent trying to survive for the six or eight months that this circus went on.
Underhill: Would you do it again?
Blair: No, I wouldn't. I would choke them sons of guys.... I mean, if I was in the same circumstances, like I said, I needed a job and everything like that, I'd probably do it again, but I wouldn't like it any better. And if I was cognizant of the fact that I had done this before, I would have a serious talk with myself about doin' this again. If I had the awareness that I had been stupid enough to get involved in this before. But you couldn't borrow any money. The banker, everybody said, "Gees, there's five guys [who have] gone broke in there." And everybody owed everybody. You would call up and want to get something, and you'd call up and say, "Hi, this is Hank Blair from Totsoh Trading Post," and the lady would go, "Herb, get the gun, it's Totsoh Trading Post!" (laughter) I mean, the guy that was here just before us, I think he wrote like $40,000 worth of bad checks. The missionary guy gave this one guy--I think he told Vicki, my wife, that he gave his partner $33,000. So there's $33,000 in less than six months, plus $40,000-some worth of bad checks, plus the NTUA, the utility company. They owed everybody. It was a mess.
They had left some of their bookwork here, and this Doyle Johnson is a nice guy. He's a missionary in Mexico now. Tall, cowboy-looking guy, just the nicest guy, but just--as my Uncle Elijah would say--slower than a wooden watch. Just a ________. And they left their books. What they would do, they would do like $1,000 or $1,500 in a day, and they would take 10 percent for God, for Jesus, off the top. And then I think his partner--and how they got together, I don't know-- was taking 10 percent for Ron off the top. You'd like to net 10 percent in a business, much less just take 10 percent off for Jesus right off the top. But it was an experience. Everybody said, "God, you're gonna go broke! Everybody's gone broke in that business."
Underhill: So how'd you do it?
Blair: My father-in-law, Mr. King Mike, Sr., loaned me $10,000. He's my Navajo guy from Kayenta. He loaned me $10,000, and I paid him back with interest in about six or eight months. I paid him about 20 percent interest. I gave him $12,000 back. I had some money. At Kayenta I had money in a profit-sharing plan, and I drew some of that out. My wife ran the cash register, I mopped the floor and cut the mutton and stocked the shelves. We used to do like $400 a day. I remember someone had all the shelves all faced up. Someone would come and buy a can of beans, and you'd go over there and face it back up. It was just work--work hard.
There had been some crooked guys here and stuff. It was hard to earn the confidence of the customers. You had to really prove yourself to the banker over there, and then to the customer here. Like I said, we did all the trading post stuff. I mean, we sold live sheep on the hoof, and we bought lambs, and we bought wool. We just hustled. Like I said, my wife ran the cash register, I was sweeping the floors and pumpin' the gas. At that time we didn't have-- the gas pumps, we had to go out and put it in. We finally got that deal, self-service. That was kind of an exciting thing--it was fun.
Underhill: Now, Hank, you mentioned when you first came that the only reason it hadn't burned was because of the post office. What do you mean by that?
Blair: Well, the post office was still open, and the tribe had an interest, and the community had an interest in keepin' the post office open. It's what they call a contract post office. And gettin' back to.... We get paid $425 a month for doin' the post office. It costs us about $600, at least, in wages, but it brings people. Everybody comes to get their junk mail, at least, every day. So you've got people comin' in and out of the store. The store wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the post office. That's what kept it open. It would have been gone. I think there were five people that went broke in the store before we got here--in about four years. There were some guys with a bunch of money. There was a guy that inherited a bunch of money and decided he was gonna get rich in the trading post business, and he lasted about a year or somethin' like that.
Underhill: How has your business changed since 1984?
Blair: Well, even just in this short time, you're doin' business, to start, with a lot of older people, livestock people, and stuff like that, and your older customers are just dyin' off. Your old-time Navajos, the "real" Indians, so to speak, are dyin' off. It's evolved more into a convenience-type business, a grocery store rather than a trading post. We don't buy livestock anymore, we don't buy wool and mohair anymore. We don't buy lambs anymore. Part of that [is] people don't have as much livestock as they used to. They just don't have it. It's changed. But like I said, you're still the bank. The electricity goes off in Lukachukai, nobody calls the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority--they call the trading post. And it's your job to call. You're still doin' all that kind of stuff. You're the center of the community.
I have a friend of mine, a Navajo guy, Roy Begay--he was a councilman at Klagetoh. And the Klagetoh store closed down, and he tried to get me to open it up. He said, "If the store goes, there's no community, because that's why that community was there, basically, was the store." That's where the identity of the community comes from, is from the store. Finally they got somebody to open it up. The store is the center of the community. This is where you come and sit down and sit out in front of the store and talk to people. That's the way it's always been. They camped, and we had the whole front of the store with benches, and people would just sit out there all day long--come to town.
For the older people, that was their social life, goin' to the store. I mean, other than goin' to ceremonies and stuff like that. You go get to see people. And it's still that way to a great extent. But that was their community. At Red Mesa, before they built the chapter house, they had the chapter meetings right on the porch of the trading post. Our mom has movies of Paul Jones, who was the chairman of the Navajo Tribe, having a meeting on the front porch of the trading post. My sister and I used to sell Kool-Aid and lemonade up there, a penny a little cup, at the chapter meeting. You know, it was a chapter meeting on the porch of the trading post.
Underhill: Do you have a lease now?
Blair: After ten years, I finally got a lease. I kinda wished I didn't.... All this time, "Gosh, I wish we had a lease." When they finally came around to give it to me, I was, "Gees, I don't know whether I want this thing or not."
Underhill: And how long is it?
Blair: Well, it was twenty-five years, but ten years of it was up. Like I said, the reasoning.... I felt very fortunate. It was supposed to have been a fifteen-year lease, so I felt very fortunate that they didn't give me the fifteen-year lease and tell me I only had five years left. Now we have ten years left--roughly ten or eleven years left.
Underhill: And how does your lease work? What do you give the tribe?
Blair: We pay the tribe a certain percentage of our gross sales. There's a minimum, and you pay 1½ percent of the gross sales.
Cole: Did you pay that over the years you didn't have the lease?
Blair: Yeah, we paid it anyway. I kinda quit for a while. I got mad because we didn't have a lease. You read in the paper, and they had a big supermarket in Window Rock, and they finally just closed up and went bankrupt, and they owed the Tribe $500,000. They don't check. I'm behind right now, I don't know how much, but the Tribe doesn't know that, they don't have any idea. They don't pay attention. They're always talkin' about "We have no revenues!" or whatever, but they don't take care of it. I just got mad and said, "Gees! It'd take twenty years to get where I owed 'em $500,000! So these guys owe 'em $500,000 and just walk off and leave it!" They're always talkin' about, "We have no revenues," and then you don't collect the ones that you have?! I mean, you look at leases, something will be up for lease, and you'll say, "I'd like to lease that," and they say, "Well, you gotta pay $190,000 back rent." Well, the business isn't worth $190,000, and they want.... You're gonna have to spend $200,000 to get it....
Underhill: How would you describe Navajo politics?
Blair: Well, considering at this present time we've had "The President of the Week Club" for the last month. They've impeached the president, then the vice-president became the president. They impeached him. Then somebody else became president for a day--Kelsy Begay. He was president for six or eight hours, then they got Milton Bluehouse in there. I think it's in a sad state of affairs right now. It's in a transition period right now, and I hope it changes into somethin' better, but I don't know.
Underhill: How involved are you in the local politics?
Blair: Not really. I can't vote. You become so much a part of the community that they don't realize that you can't vote. They wonder why you didn't vote. (chuckles) Well, I can't vote! You know, they think that you're part of the community. It's a system that's dominated by certain older factions, because a lot of the younger ones--it's still important that you speak Navajo, and that disenfranchises probably 20 percent or maybe 40 percent of the Navajos because they don't speak Navajo good enough to go down there and participate. There's gonna have to be some changes made. The government at the local level concentrates on grazing, fights, here and in Lukachukai, 'cause you have the farms irrigation. That's what their focus is on. That eliminates about 60 percent of your people, 'cause they don't have livestock, they don't have farms or anything like that.
Underhill: You mentioned Vicki. For the interview, when and how did you meet Vicki?
Blair: I always say I met her at a dance in Kayenta at the chapter house. The first time I saw her, I remember seein' her. She was kinda cute and I thought I'd like to meet her. I knew her brothers. My wife's brother is married to my sister, also. And they teach at the college. Well, my brother-in-law now, he's the controller of the Navajo Community College. He has an MBA from USC or something like that. My wife's the only one in her family that doesn't have a master's degree.
Underhill: Wow.
Blair: Their mom and dad came from sheep camp, didn't go to school 'til they were nine or ten years old, and all their kids are educated. They have done well.
Underhill: When did you get married?
Blair: March 15, 1972. That's my anniversary. My wife had been married before, she had three daughters, and then we have a son. We have six grandkids at this time.
Underhill: Oh, my!
Blair: You're lucky they're not here! They'd have been knockin' on the door every five minutes. They've been here this week.
Underhill: What kind of ceremony did you have?
Blair: We were married by a justice of the peace, and then we had kind of a traditional Navajo wedding. Vicki's grandma insisted on that. So we had a traditional wedding. At the time.... I don't know, it's a pain in the butt. I think women are the ones that like weddings. (chuckles) I'm glad we did have a traditional Navajo wedding. I'd just as soon have been married by Elvis in Vegas or something. (laughter) It was nice.
Underhill: I forgot to ask you early on if you have a Navajo nickname.
Blair: Well, my dad's name was Bitsii’ »izhinii, which is "black hair." The man, Roscoe McGee, who was there before, was a red-headed guy, and his name was __________. So my dad came, and he was Bitsii’ »izhinii. And then I was _____________.
Underhill: Son of?
Blair: "Little black hair," __________, which is "son of." They used to tease me. I used to stay with my Uncle Lij, and they used to tease my mom that I was really his son, instead of my dad's. (laughter) There's a picture of my dad and Roscoe up there at Red Mesa.
Underhill: Well, what do you think Anglo folks should understand about Navajo culture? You've lived it your entire life.
Blair: That it's a really rich culture. I think a lot of times, nowadays, most white people or Anglos, they want to know more about the Navajo culture than a lot of times the Navajos do. In a lot of ways, it's this New Age stuff-- they're all into, you know, "the Indians have the answer to everything." If the Indians had the answer to everything, there'd be more Mercedes dealerships. You know, the Navajos are trying to survive, and everybody's interested in their culture.
My kids have benefitted from my wife being a Navajo. And Navajo culture, I was talking to my mom the other day about my son had a real good--he's socialized, I guess, very good. When we were kids, like I said, when we went to Farmington from the trading post, we were social bozos, I guess. But Navajos teach--you know, my son shakes hands with everyone-- all my kids do. They know how to introduce themselves, which is a big part of Navajo culture. They know who they are, they know who they are in relationship to their family, their cousins, their grandmas. They know their clans. I was telling my mom, because of Vicki and her family, my kids have learned. They get along real well. My son can go anywhere, because of being raised in both cultures. That causes a lot of problems, too. My son's not very big, but he's a tough guy--beat up his cousins. And they said, "Well, how come he's so tough?" I said, "If you're the only half-breed gettin' on the bus to go to school for eighteen years, you get pretty damned tough!" It comes from both sides. You're a little white guy, or you're a little brown guy. You're the wrong.... I think his Navajo culture has really.... All my kids know how to introduce themselves in Navajo. They know their clans, they know.... And that gives you a place, that gives you a starting point or a foundation. That's real good.
Underhill: Well, what do you think you've learned over all these years?
Blair: You asked whether I speak Navajo or not. I tell people I know enough to get into trouble, and not enough to get out. I think I still learn, you're still learnin'. When I was a kid, we wanted to be Indians so bad, because that was, for us, the dominant culture. I wanted to go to school in Brigham City, I wanted to get on that truck with my big trunk and go to school. In a way, it's been hard, because I'm never gonna be, I can't be a Navajo. And I can't be an Anglo, I can't be a white guy either, 'cause I'm not. I'm sorta stuck in the middle.
One time a friend of mine came down from Utah. We traded horses and we went to a ropin'. It was in Tuba City, and there was probably a hundred people there. He said, "You know, we're the only white people here." I said, "There's two of us! I've been the only white guy all my life." I've struggled with that. Like I said, you want to be a Navajo. My sister is married to a black guy, and her kids grew up around the reservation. Well, when the kids at the school get tribal clothes--well, they didn't get tribal clothes, 'cause they're not Navajos. Gees, that's a [hard].... I never had that experience myself, with the tribal clothes, but I've had [others]. You know, you don't belong here, to a certain extent. You've had to deal with that your whole life. Like I said, I can't vote. Ask me what's goin' on in tribal government--I can't vote.
Someone asked me the other day who the governor of Arizona was, and I.... The only reason I know who it is, is because she used to teach school at Chinle--Mrs. Hull, and she's the governor of Arizona. I don't belong there either. I've known more tribal chairmen personally, or tribal presidents personally, than I've known.... Like I said, I just barely.... I know who the governor is, because she came out here to visit one time, 'cause she used to teach school.
Underhill: What do you think you've given back to the communities of Kayenta and Lukachukai?
Blair: Like I said about being at Red Mesa, I don't think you even think about that, but I think just by bein' a good [person]--just like you do anywhere, whether you're a good person, or a trustworthy person, a helpful person-- especially in the Navajo culture, if you help people out.... You have certain responsibilities. Part of this, you know, you have responsibilities to your relatives or to your ______ you've been a good in-law. If you're a Navajo, you're only an in-law to the people that you're in-laws to, but if you're a white guy married to a Navajo, you are related to every Navajo that ever lived or everything--and it's whether you've been a good in-law.
I know that when my dad died in 1983 and they had the funeral at Monument Valley--my dad's buried in the cemetery at Monument Valley--there was I don't know how many people there, but 90 percent of 'em were Navajos, and there was, I'd say, at least five.... It was just overwhelming, there was a lot of people there. And I don't think my dad ever did anything because it was gonna have a big crowd at his funeral or anything like that. But he was a good person. "He helped me out with my sheep when I needed a sheep. He let me buy a ram." People will come up and say that to me. I think it's the same in any community. If you're a productive part of that community, that's how you'll be remembered. I was over there at the college giving a speech, a little lecture on something, and one of the kids was there, and it made me feel pretty damned old, because this girl said she's gettin' her master's degree, and she said "Mr. Blair used to give me a dollar for every 'A' that I had on my report card when I was in elementary school." I still do that. Kids bring in their report cards, and I give 'em a dollar for every "A." I'll have to watch, because sometimes they'll bring the same report card in!--different kid with the same report card. But you know, little things like that. Like I said, it made me feel old. The girl's gettin' her master's degree and she said, "And Mr. Blair used to give me a dollar for every 'A.'" Gees, I'm.... First of all, when the pretty girls start callin' you "Mr. Blair," it's over the hill (laughter), you're dead meat!
[END SIDE 2, BEGIN SIDE 3]
Underhill: This is Karen Underhill, and this is Part Three of an interview with Hank Blair at Totsoh Trading Post, and it's Thursday, August 13, and it's now about 1:15.
So Hank, just before we broke, we were going to ask about United Indian Traders Association. Are you a member?
Blair: I am not a member. I used.... I never had a store at the time when there were memberships available. My dad was a member, my uncle was a member. I know my uncle was an officer of it. I think my dad probably was on the board of directors at one time, or something like that.
My dad kind of had a falling-out with 'em in the seventies, and he refused to buy the membership. The FTC was attacking certain people, or filing charges against certain people. My dad felt that certain ones of 'em needed charges filed against 'em. He didn't want the United Indian Traders to spend money defending.... You know, they came to the United Indian Traders and said, "Pay our lawyers and fight these deals for [us]." My dad felt that some of 'em were crooks. One of the guys was a member of the Mormon Church, and my dad said, "But the guy's a crook!" And they said, "But he's an upstanding member of the Church!" And my dad said, "He's a crook!" So he kind of.... He may have paid his membership, but just didn't participate. He felt if they were crooks, let 'em pay their own lawyer if they were in trouble. He just didn't want to be a part of it.
Steiger: I had one question--not to interrupt. How did you get started giving kids a dollar.... Why did you do that? Why did you give 'em a buck for every "A" they get?
Blair: You know, I think just there's.... You know, there's a big dropout rate and everything like that. You just try to encourage them to stay in school. And the difference between Kayenta and Lukachukai, at the store, when the kids would come in the store and you knew they should be in school and you told their parents--or we used to call the school and the truant officer would come over and get 'em. But at Lukachukai, you call their parents, and they'd tell you to leave their kids alone. "I never went to school and it didn't hurt me a bit!" You know, "I'm a dumb son-of-a-gun, so my kids can be ignorant too!" But we used to do that in Kayenta. My mom was a teacher, and she always encouraged people to go to school. I've just been doin' it for a long time. I've got a couple of kids that I give eight or nine--you know, when they get an "A" in behavior, that wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but.... You know, "Lunch period. He gets an 'A' in lunch." But I still give 'em a dollar. Like I said, I got kids, I've probably given 'em $100 in the last few years, if they get "A's." And like I said, I don't even remember the little girl--vaguely--but when she said she was gettin' her master's degree, "Mr. Blair used to give me a dollar for all my 'A's,'" and stuff like that.
They unload the bus right here in front of the store. I've watched 'em. There's one little girl named Andy--I think it's Andrea. I said, "When you get married, I'm leavin'!" She was born, she's about fourteen years old, they get off the bus here every day, and you see 'em every day. So like I said, when Andy get's married--and I hope she waits 'til she's twenty-two or twenty-three, but when she get's married, that's enough, I'm leavin'!
Underhill: Why have you stayed so long?
Blair: Well, you can make enough to live, but you can't make enough to leave. (laughter) It's one of those kind of deals. That's the truth, really, to a certain extent. And it's hard, you can't sell one of these places. Nobody in their right mind wants to buy a trading post for what it's worth. I used to see guys like Jim McJunkin [phonetic spelling] down at Teec-Tso, and Don Jensen, and I think, "Man, I don't ever want to be there...." You know, they've been there since Christ was a pup. Don Jensen was at Crystal, and he used to have a big chair, and he'd have a foot up against a post, and this is how he ran the store. When his customers came in, they would get what they wanted and either put the cash in the cash register, or write it down on their charge. He'd raised most of 'em, and they would seriously just.... You know, his good customers, he'd be sittin' in a chair, he'd never get up. They'd get their groceries, add it up on the adding machine, write it down, and put the ticket in the deal.
Underhill: And what finally happened to him?
Blair: He left. My wife's brother, as a matter of fact, bought the trading post. It's closed now, but he [i.e., Don Jensen] was there thirty-some years.
Jim McJunkin was at Teec-Tso for thirty-two or thirty- eight [years] or something like that. And a character! I mean, they tell stories.... That's one Lij told about, asked if they wanted to deliver bread, and he said--well, Lij was politer, he said, "Piss on 'em! Let 'em eat crackers!" (laughter) They tell good stories about it, and he was just a character. Been there for thirty-two years. I think he came there as an orphan or something and bought it from someone.
Underhill: What stories do they tell about you?
Blair: About me? Hopefully, givin' the kids a dollar! (laughter) for gettin' "A's" on their report cards.
I'll tell you the story about the thirty-five naked white ladies. You want to hear that story? (laughter)
Underhill: Sure!
Blair: One day, there was an older lady up here, her name was Grace Bin [phonetic spelling]. One of her granddaughters got married. As part of the dowry, they got two cows. Well, they butchered one cow, and on Saturday they ate the cow for the wedding. The next day after the wedding was over, they were gonna butcher the other cow. They showed it the knife, and it got away, and it took off runnin', goin' home. I think the son-in-law was from Crystal or somethin', and this cow just took off down the field. So she calls up and she says, "Mr. Blair, you have horses. Can you come up and help us catch the cow? It's runnin' away." So my daughter was here, Konea [phonetic spelling], so we had two horses. We saddled up the horses, nothing to do in Lukachukai, so we're chasin'.... There's like four or five of us on horses--a couple of her sons-in- laws and kids on horses--and we're chasin' this cow along the base of the mesa up here, and in through the cedar trees. You'd just see it like every mile or so. We're chasin' it, and we go way down here and we go over here to where Totsoh Wash is, and Raymond Knockeye [phonetic spelling] lives up in the corner up there, and his daughter- in-law is havin' kind of a "get closer to your Maker," all these white ladies up there, doin' a sweat and "get to be a real Indian." I don't know what the heck, how to explain it. But we don't know this. We're chasin' the cow along here, and there's three or four of us on horses, and there's like four pickups. It's just somethin'! Everybody's havin' fun, we're chasin' this cow around there. So I come bustin' out of the trees, right around the corner is the wash. And all these Navajos were in the truck, and they're goin'.... I said, "Where did he go?" And they went, "He went down the wash!" So I whip and spur and come around the corner, and here's thirty-five naked white ladies having a sweat lodge over there. (laughter) They'll be tellin' that story, "And Mr. Blair came roarin' around the corner on his horse, and here's all these ladies!" They weren't all naked. They had covered up, because they had heard these other guys. But all the Navajos were goin', "Send Mr. Blair down there to chase that cow!" (laughter) So I go roarin' around the corner and slammin' into the wash, and here's all these.... They were havin' a sweat down there. All these ladies were down there.
Underhill: And what did you do?
Blair: I turned around and calmly went back the other way, and cussed everybody out for sendin' me down there! Sendin' me down to the wash. They thought that was pretty funny. We never did catch the cow. They caught it, it went home, and they went and got it again. So that was a big Sunday in Lukachukai--havin' fun in Lukachukai.
Underhill: When did the Thriftway come in?
Blair: To the reservation?
Underhill: Well, to here.
Blair: This one was here when we came. Well, see, Raymond Knockeye built the little store out there. He was the former chairman of the Navajo Tribe. They had a little gas station and everything, and then it's probably been twenty years ago or more they sold it to Thriftway, and Thriftway has been there ever since.
Underhill: And how does that affect you?
Blair: Well, there used to be three stores here in the area. There used to be the Kennedy Store, which was up here on the hill, and then there was Upper Greasewood, which is about four miles down the road, and they've both been gone. So there's always been several stores. When I came here, this store was basically abandoned, so they had all the business down there. We held our own against it. Everybody was afraid of it. Like I said, when we came here, nobody thought you could compete against 'em or anything. But we're here.
Underhill: And how do you get your supplies for the store?
Blair: They come, actually, all the way from Amarillo, Texas. It's Affiliated Foods, and it goes to Albuquerque, and then there's a small outfit. It's called General Distributing Incorporated, GDI, which I think that's "God Damned Independents" is what it stands for. Then they add about 10 percent onto it and bring it out here. We're kind of at the end of the line, so we pay more for everything that we get. It used to be, when I was a kid, you had salesmen come out to visit you and stuff like that, but it's really changed. It's the same thing--you used to have your mom and pop little grocery and dry goods store in every little town, and we're basically that. Wal-Mart has shut down all those deals, so it's a different life, different business.
Underhill: What are some of your favorite memories associated with your years in the trading business?
Blair: You know, like I said, when I was a kid, it was just fun. You were herdin' sheep, ridin' in somebody's wagon, doin' a lot of.... For a kid, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. You basically played all the time. That's what you did. In lamb season they were all yours. There were 3,000 of those lambs, and a lot of times you had what they called "pee-wees" you had to take care of. You fed 'em and we always had lambs and baby goats to feed, and catch prairie dogs. We had a prairie dog farm in our back yard. We had rabbits, we had a baby coyote. Used to get out there with a fly rod, and when the bats would be flyin' around, and chase 'em with a broom. For a kid, it was a great life, it was fun. Go arrowhead huntin', you know. Everywhere you went around there, there was pottery and different things like that. My mother, like I said, she was a teacher, so she.... Actually, like I said, she taught us at home for our grade school years. She integrated all that into our learnin' about stuff. It was interesting.
As I got older.... Like I said, to be a trader, you have to be a people person, and I think I'm a pretty good people person. I just enjoy meetin' the people. Like my Uncle Lij said, "kissin' babies and pattin' ladies on the butt." It's kinda show biz. Everybody comes to the store. You get to see everybody and talk to people. I think that's what I enjoy about it. You get to see people, you get to talk to people. You know, Eddie the Breadman--the guy that delivers the bread was always known as Eddie the Breadman. You know all his kids, you know his family, you know everything. That's the fun part of it. Like I said, seein' the kids get off the school bus every day, just watchin' 'em grow up. My brother worked for me for a couple of years, and he married a girl that used to get off the bus here every day--Debbie. Just watched 'em grow up. Seein' 'em have little kids of their own. Makes you feel old sometimes. I think that's what I enjoy about it. Any kind of business like that where you meet people, you get to meet people every day, and tourists come by. You get to hear about different places. Just people, meeting people, that's what's nice about it.
Underhill: Any regrets?
Blair: (sigh) You know, sometimes the grass always looks greener. It looks like it'd be nice to have a job at the post office or with NAU or somethin', where you had health insurance--we don't have health insurance, can't get health insurance. But it beats havin' a real job. I've always kinda resisted doin' that, havin' a real job. Sometimes you wish you'd.... You know, another ten years or fifteen years, you'd have a check comin', be retired or somethin' like that. I've enjoyed it. I doubt very seriously if I'm gonna be doin' anything else for the rest of my life, no matter how much I.... Like I said, I wish I had health insurance or something.
Underhill: What do you think the future is for business on the reservation?
Blair: You know, it's easy, the older you get, to become more cynical. I remember the Jacks sold Shiprock Trading Post to R. B. Foutz in 1950, 'cause they thought the trading post era was over. They said, "It's done." It's changed, you know. It's changed a bunch, but I don't think it's done. I might not recognize it in twenty or thirty years from now, but I think it's gonna be.... Trading posts, basically, it's a service business is what you're doin'. My mom and dad were more so, maybe--they were the liaison between the Navajos and the dominant society out there, but you still do that to a certain extent today. I don't realize how different a place this is, but people come and they say, "This is a little different out here." I may not recognize it, but I think it'll be somethin' goin' on.
Underhill: What else would you like to add?
Blair: I told about all my stories, I think. (chuckles) Nothin' that I can think of. It's only been two hours. I can usually burn up a day or two tellin' stories. But that's about all I can think of. I'm sure I'll think of somethin' when I leave.
Steiger: I have one kind of inconsequential question. You were talking about when you were selling wagons, you would take the wagons in trade?
Blair: Oh, yeah.
Steiger: So what would you do with those wagons?
Blair: Sell used wagons. (laughter) If people would trade in their saddles, we sold saddles and stuff like that. People would trade in their saddles and buy a new saddle. You'd sell the old saddle to some guy that wasn't as well- off. My dad tells stories about people writin' home from the railroad, you know, and would send a check to pay the bill, or send money to pay the bill for their wife, and tell my dad, "Make sure she feeds the horse. Make sure she buys grain for the horse." In those days, especially, you were the go-between between the Navajos and the dominant culture. And I talk about doin' ten things in the trading post-- probably then you did a hundred different things. It was a struggle to make a living. You had to do anything. There's an impression that "God, these traders got rich." I know most of 'em, they're just all gettin' Social Security checks. A guy one time said, "I heard your uncle made $100,000 a year at Aneth." You know, my uncle was at Aneth. And I asked my uncle one time and he said, "Heck, our gross sales were $60,000. It's pretty hard to make $100,000 when the whole business only did $60,000 a year or somethin' like that." So it's pretty hard.
Oh, one thing I would like to [talk about]. In the fifties, the first thing that came along was the uranium. There was a uranium boom on the reservation. It seemed like everybody, all of a sudden you were seein' strangers at the store, and everybody had a geiger counter and they were gonna get rich. (laughter) I'm serious! Everybody was gonna get rich. And Navajos were out there. I remember one guy that worked for us found a petrified log that was like pure uranium, but that was it. But everybody had a geiger counter. And so, boy, I was just a little kid, and this was exciting, because all of a sudden you saw people at the store, rather than the same customers.
Then they had the oil field boom. Red Mesa was just below Aneth, Utah. Red Mesa Trading Post was only about 200 yards from the Utah state line. Whenever the surveyors would come out, they'd pay me fifty cents or a quarter or something like that, and I'd go show 'em where the stake was, where the section marker was.
But the oil boom came, and we didn't have electricity. And we sold gas, and we had one of those old pumps that you fill up. You pump it by hand, and it fills up that glass thing. Well, if you were fillin' up like one car a week, givin' 'em five dollars' worth of gas, that was big business. But then they had these Hal Burton [phonetic spelling] oil trucks come, and they had 150-gallon tanks, and you're goin' (pantomimes pumping gas) to fill that glass thing up. It probably held twenty gallons. So my dad bought a World War II K.W. surplus generator, and then we had one light bulb hangin' in the kitchen. At first we only turned it on at night, or when somebody needed some gas pumped--we turned the generator on. That really changed the whole.... I mean, like I said, there were no roads, and then all of a sudden they were just bulldozin' roads everywhere for this oil deal. And that was cash business, people comin' in there. And the thing was, you were doin' it all behind the counter. It's not like a convenience store where you just check everybody out. That was a lot of work. And I remember my parents. They were so eager for the business, people would come by in the middle of the night and want gas--they had a buzzer, people would get up. So it changed the whole complexion of the business.
Underhill: And how did it impact the Navajo?
Blair: Well, they had jobs, there were things goin' on. They ended up, by the trickle-down effect or whatever, they ended up with jobs. Guys that my dad got jobs at Superior Oil or somethin' like that, probably started out as laborers or somethin' like that, retired after thirty years. It impacted everybody.
That's it!
Underhill: Do you have any other questions?
Cole: No.
Underhill: It's been wonderful--we knew it would be!
Blair: Well, thank you.
Underhill: We really appreciate the time you've taken to do this.
Blair: Well, I'm glad you found the place here. (laughter) Brad's directions.... I told you two-and-a-half hours.
Cole: You said an hour-and-a-half.
Blair: Did I say that? No, I couldn't have said that!
[END OF INTERVIEW]